FlowBank Review 2026: FINMA Withdrew the Licence — What Actually Happened
Written with AI assistance and reviewed by the NorwegianSpark SA editorial team.
FlowBank was a Swiss online bank offering trading alongside banking, aimed at retail investors who wanted a brokerage and an account in one place. It is no longer operating. The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, FINMA, withdrew its banking licence and subsequently opened bankruptcy proceedings.
This page sets out the sequence as the regulator described it, because on a question like this a regulator's own published statement is worth more than any amount of commentary.
The sequence
- FINMA had been examining the bank since October 2021 over serious breaches of supervisory law.
- FINMA withdrew FlowBank's banking licence on 8 March 2024. FINMA notes that this ruling "does not yet have legal force due to a pending appeal" — a caveat worth carrying, because it means the withdrawal was contested.
- FINMA opened bankruptcy proceedings on 13 June 2024.
- Walder Wyss AG was appointed as bankruptcy liquidator.
What FINMA said was wrong
The regulator's press release of 13 June 2024 is specific, and the specificity is the point. On capital: "The minimum capital requirements, which must be met at all times, have been significantly and seriously breached." FINMA records that the bank was "clearly in breach of the minimum capital requirements at the end of 2023 and again at the end of April 2024".
On governance, FINMA states that "its organisation remained deficient in various areas", against "the requirement for an adequate organisation and risk management".
On financial crime controls, FINMA states that "the bank entered into numerous higher-risk business relationships and processed large transactions without properly investigating the background".
Read together, that is not a single accounting failure. It is a capital shortfall alongside organisational and anti-money-laundering deficiencies, sustained across more than two years of supervisory attention.
What happened to depositors
This is the part that should reassure anyone reading about a bank failure for the first time, and it is the clearest illustration of what a banking licence actually buys you.
Swiss law privileges deposits up to CHF 100,000 per client. FINMA's own assessment at the time was direct: "According to current calculations, the privileged deposits can be repaid in full out of the bank's available funds. Therefore we do not expect the Swiss banks' deposit insurance scheme (esisuisse) to be involved."
In other words the protected layer was expected to be paid out of the bank's remaining assets without the industry scheme needing to step in at all. FINMA stated that the primary aim of its intervention was to protect depositors, and the intervention happened while there was still money to protect. That is what supervision is for, and it is a genuine argument for choosing licensed institutions in well-supervised jurisdictions over lightly regulated ones.
Balances above the privileged threshold, and assets that are not deposits, sit in the ordinary bankruptcy queue and are a different question entirely.
What FlowBank offered, and why that combination is worth understanding
FlowBank's proposition was a Swiss bank account and a trading platform in one place: cash, cards, and access to a wide range of markets, under a Swiss banking licence. For retail investors that is an attractive package, and the Swiss part carried real weight — Switzerland's reputation for banking supervision is earned, and the CHF 100,000 privileged-deposit regime is a strong protection.
The combination is also the reason the failure is instructive, because a bank-plus-broker is two legally distinct relationships wearing one login.
Cash you deposit is a liability of the bank to you. It sits on the bank's balance sheet, the bank can use it, and that is exactly why it needs a guarantee scheme — and why the privileged-deposit regime exists.
Securities held in custody are generally your property, held for you. They are not part of the bank's estate in the same way, which is a stronger position in an insolvency than a cash deposit above the guaranteed threshold.
Most customers of a combined platform could not tell you which of their balances is in which category, and the app has no reason to explain it. If you use one, it is worth finding out before you need to know — not because failure is likely, but because the answer takes five minutes when nothing is wrong and is impossible to obtain calmly when something is.
Two and a half years of concern that a customer could not see
The detail in FINMA's account that should change behaviour is the timeline. The regulator records that it had been examining the bank since October 2021 over serious breaches of supervisory law. The licence was withdrawn in March 2024.
For roughly two and a half years, then, a customer opening the app saw a functioning Swiss bank while the supervisor was documenting capital, organisational and anti-money-laundering deficiencies. Nothing visible to a retail customer would have signalled it, and nothing was being hidden from them either — supervisory processes are confidential for good reasons, including that publicising an investigation can itself cause the run it is trying to prevent.
The practical consequence is modest but real: you cannot detect this class of problem yourself, so the mitigations that work are structural rather than investigative. Stay inside the protection limit. Do not concentrate. Prefer jurisdictions where a supervisor has the power and the willingness to act — which, uncomfortably, is exactly what this story demonstrates about Switzerland.
What a searcher looking for "FlowBank review" should take from this
A banking licence is a live status, not a permanent credential. FlowBank held a genuine Swiss banking licence right up until it did not. Any review that checked the licence once at launch and never again would have described a licensed Swiss bank throughout the period FINMA was documenting serious breaches. Checking the register at the moment you are about to deposit is the only version of that check that means anything — see how to check whether a bank is actually licensed.
Deposit protection limits are per client, per institution, and they are the number that matters. CHF 100,000 in Switzerland; EUR 100,000 across the EU under Directive 2014/49/EU. If you hold more than the limit at one institution, the excess is not protected, and splitting balances across institutions is the whole remedy.
A combined bank and broker is two relationships, not one. Cash deposits and custodied securities are treated differently in an insolvency. Convenience in one app does not merge the two legal positions, and it is worth knowing which of your balances is which before anything goes wrong.
Swiss protection compared with the EU, briefly
People often assume Swiss banking protection is categorically stronger than the European equivalent. On the deposit-guarantee question specifically, the headline numbers are closer than the reputation suggests.
Switzerland privileges deposits up to CHF 100,000 per client. The EU guarantees EUR 100,000 per depositor per credit institution under Directive 2014/49/EU. Both are per client, per institution, and both leave the excess in the ordinary creditor queue.
What differs is less the number than the surrounding machinery — the resolution powers, the funding of the schemes, and the payout mechanics. In FlowBank's case the practical outcome was better than either scheme's minimum promise: FINMA expected the privileged deposits to be repaid from the bank's own remaining funds, so esisuisse was not expected to be drawn on at all.
The transferable lesson is the same in both jurisdictions and it is unglamorous: the limit is the number that matters, it applies per institution, and holding more than it in one place is a choice you are making.
What the pending appeal means
FINMA's note that the licence withdrawal "does not yet have legal force due to a pending appeal" is worth reading carefully rather than skipping, because it cuts against a tidy narrative.
It means the bank contested the regulator's decision through the courts, and that the withdrawal was not a settled fact at the point the bankruptcy proceedings were opened. Supervisory decisions are reviewable, regulators are sometimes found to have erred, and a fair account of this episode has to say so.
It does not change the depositor position, which is what most readers came for: the bankruptcy proceedings went ahead, the privileged deposits were the protected layer, and FINMA's stated aim throughout was to protect depositors. But if you see this story summarised anywhere as a simple case of a bad bank being caught, that summary is leaving out the part where the bank disagreed in court.
Where this leaves you
FlowBank cannot be opened and is not a candidate for anyone's shortlist. Its value now is as a worked example of the failure mode: a licensed institution in a strong jurisdiction, supervised, found deficient, closed by the regulator — with the protected deposit layer expected to be repaid in full. That is a system working, uncomfortably and in public.
For live alternatives, our neobank ranking and business banking comparison cover providers currently operating, and what happens when a neobank fails explains why the licensed-bank case above is materially different from the e-money case most fintech apps sit under.