Branson, head FINMA, points out the priority to change audit system

The Director of FINMA Mark Branson believes that the audit system that controls the banks should be changed. In an interview with Le Matin Dimanche and SonntagsZeitung, Branson says "there is no denying a certain conflict of interest."

The auditing firms control for the Federal Authority of the financial market supervision, but are remunerated by their own representative or banks. The risk of a conflict of interest tends to increase "when an audit is required to announce bad behavior", says the Director of FINMA.

Mark Branson therefore hopes that FINMA will become the organ representative, ie it should be able to decide which is the independent auditors who will inspect the bank in question. In his view, the supervisory authority can improve the cost-effectiveness of the external auditors' checks it deems "non-optimal", recalling that "the banking industry pays annually 110 million for this type of review."