Your profession doesn’t draw the line. What you do in the deal does.

A buyer from London has seen a chalet in Gstaad. After two viewings and a negotiation, the owner accepts his offer on a Tuesday afternoon. Until then, everything the agency did was sales work: photographs, viewings, phone calls. Since 1 October 2026, that Tuesday may also be the day its anti-money laundering duties begin.

That was the day the revised Swiss Anti-Money Laundering Act, the AMLA, came into force. For the first time it covers advisers: individuals and companies who, on a professional basis and on behalf of others, take part in financial transactions connected with the purchase and sale of property. The ordinance spells out what taking part means: advice that causally contributes to the transaction. It also sets the moment: once both parties have declared their intention to sign the purchase contract.

It pays to read this carefully, because an exaggerated version is going around. The law does not turn every agency into a financial intermediary. The Federal Council chose not to bring estate agents under the law across the board, as the European Union does, and its dispatch to Parliament states that agents who act exclusively as agents are not covered. The profession doesn’t draw the line. What the agency does in each deal does.

Where the line runs.

At the top of the market, an agency rarely just introduces two people. It helps set the price and terms, coordinates with the notary, suggests how to structure the purchase or puts the buyer in touch with the bank that lends. The more it does, the closer it gets to the definition. One Swiss law firm reads it this way: helping to structure the deal, for example by drafting the contract, is covered; simply bringing the parties together is not.

Exactly where your agency falls is a question for your lawyer or for the self-regulatory organisation itself, not for a blog post. What I can do is show where many agencies get the arithmetic wrong. It is in the exemptions.

The exemptions were written for a different market.

The law excludes three situations it considers low risk: transactions under family, inheritance or gift law; transfers worth less than CHF 5 million where the price is paid and received exclusively through banks or other financial intermediaries subject to the law; and the purchase of a home in Switzerland for the buyer’s own use.

For an average agency, that covers a large share of the work. For a luxury agency, far less. According to UBS, an upscale holiday home in Gstaad costs around CHF 25,000 per square metre on average. At 200 square metres, Tuesday’s chalet is already worth CHF 5 million. And in the mountains, most of what sells is second homes. Whether a house the buyer occupies a few weeks a year counts as a home for their own use is exactly the question to put to your lawyer before relying on that exemption.

The professional-basis threshold doesn’t help much either. The ordinance treats advice as professional in every case once any one of these limits is exceeded in a calendar year: CHF 50,000 in gross revenue, more than 20 clients or transactions, third-party assets above CHF 5 million at any point, or transactions totalling more than CHF 2 million. A single sale in Gstaad or Verbier exceeds the last one.

The exemptions were written for a family flat in Lausanne, not for a CHF 5 million chalet.

What applies since 1 October.

If your agency is covered, the due diligence duties have applied since 1 October, with no transition period:

• Identify the client and verify their identity.
• Establish the beneficial owner, who is not always the person signing. A company, a trust or a proxy may stand in front of them.
• Identify the subject and purpose of the transaction and, where the risk is high, look into its background.
• Document all of it so that an expert third party can follow it. Electronic records are fine.
• Train the team and check that all of the above is done.

Anyone who knows or has reasonable grounds to suspect that the money comes from a crime must report it immediately to MROS, the Money Laundering Reporting Office, and may not tell the client or anyone else. An external audit firm checks compliance, and the agency pays for it.

The deadline that matters: 1 December.

Anyone already working as an adviser on 1 October has two months to apply to a self-regulatory organisation recognised by FINMA: until 1 December 2026. While the application is pending, the ordinance allows them to keep advising existing clients and to accept new mandates from them. Whether that extends to new clients is worth settling with the organisation before your next sale. Anyone who misses the deadline, or whose application is refused, may no longer act as an adviser.

Firms already supervised by FINMA report their advisory activity to FINMA within the same deadline. And FINMA keeps a public register of affiliated advisers, available online.

What this changes on your website.

This is where I come in, and not as a lawyer. The duties are legal ones, but they are met or breached in very concrete places: the form where a buyer leaves their details, the CRM where those details are stored and the automated messages it sends. Three details almost nobody checks.

• When you ask for the data. If the duty starts when both parties want to sign, asking for a passport in the first form is too much and puts buyers off. Asking late and without warning annoys them at the worst possible moment. The website can explain from the start what will be requested, and when.
• The file. The records have to make sense to an auditor. A file per transaction, dated and in order, is easier to build into the system from the start than to assemble by hand in November.
• What the machines say. The law forbids telling the client about a report to MROS. An automated notice such as “your file is under compliance review”, or an AI assistant answering “why is my purchase delayed?”, can say more than it should. Those texts are written and tested beforehand, not afterwards.

And then there is the part that interests me most. An owner torn between two agencies values discretion, but also seriousness. An agency that explains plainly on its website how it vets buyers, and that appears in FINMA’s register when that applies to it, is telling her that her house won’t end up in just anyone’s hands. What looks like a burden today can be read as a guarantee.

Seven weeks.

1. Now

   Apply the due diligence duties

   Identification, beneficial owner, purpose and documentation have applied since 1 October to everyone covered.

2. This week

   Write down what you do in a deal

   Step by step: who sets the price, who drafts, who talks to the bank and the notary. It is the basis of any assessment.

3. Before November

   Have your lawyer confirm it

   Whether your agency is an adviser within the meaning of the law, and whether an exemption covers your real portfolio rather than the theoretical one.

4. Before 1 December

   Apply for membership

   To a self-regulatory organisation recognised by FINMA. The list is on FINMA’s website.

5. Before your next sale

   Review forms, CRM and automated messages

   What is requested, when, where it is stored and what an automated message must never say.

Before you call your lawyer, try an exercise. Describe in five lines what you did in your last transaction, from the first viewing to the signing, with no adjectives and without thinking about the law.

Now read it the way a self-regulatory organisation would. Did you only put two people in touch, or did you help them close? And a question almost nobody asks: what does your website say you do? That description exists too, and it is published.

If you would like me to look at your website, your forms and your automations with these eyes, start with the Strategic Diagnostic. The legal reading of your case is a matter for your lawyer.