New Zealand Foreign Trust vs Switzerland: Disclosure, Regulation and Reporting

The question "new zealand foreign trust vs switzerland" usually comes from a family that already has a trust in New Zealand, or has been told that the New Zealand regime became less discreet after its disclosure reform, and wants to know what a Swiss seat would change. The two systems are built on different foundations. New Zealand is a common-law country in which trusts are native. Switzerland is a civil-law country that recognizes foreign-law trusts through the Hague Convention and, since the financial-services reforms, licenses the professionals who run them.

This page compares the two on law, supervision, registers, banking and substance. It is general information, not advice. On New Zealand law and tax, the facts available here are thin, so the page says what to ask a New Zealand adviser rather than guessing at rules.

What "foreign trust" means, and why it matters here

In New Zealand usage, a "foreign trust" is a label in the local legal and tax vocabulary. It is generally applied to a trust whose settlor lives outside the country while a trustee is resident there. That label drives which disclosure and reporting duties apply. The exact test, the scope of the reformed disclosure rules and the information that has to be filed are matters for a New Zealand lawyer or accountant, and they change with legislation.

Switzerland has no equivalent category. A trust administered in Switzerland is not a creature of Swiss statute; it is governed by a chosen foreign law, and Switzerland applies the Hague Trusts Convention to recognize it. What Swiss law does regulate is the person running it, as the next section shows.

The distinction is worth keeping in mind because the two regimes answer different questions. New Zealand asks, in effect, "what kind of trust is this and who must be told about it?" Switzerland asks "who is the professional administering it, and is that person supervised?" Comparing them one rule at a time can mislead; comparing the overall architecture is more useful. For the underlying distinction, see governing law versus seat of administration.

How Switzerland regulates the trustee

Swiss supervision attaches to the professional trustee, not to the trust instrument. The Financial Institutions Act (FinIA, or LEFin in French) treats trustees as financial institutions. Under Article 2 paragraph 1 letter b, trustees sit in the same family as asset managers, managers of collective assets, fund management companies and securities firms.

Several provisions define the perimeter:

• Who is a trustee. Under Article 17 paragraph 2, a trustee is anyone who, on a professional basis, manages or disposes of a separate estate for a beneficiary or for a specific purpose under a trust deed within the meaning of the 1985 Hague Convention.
• What "professional" means. Under Article 3, an activity is professional when it is an independent economic activity carried out to obtain a regular income.
• Legal form. Under Article 18, a trustee with its seat or domicile in Switzerland must be a sole proprietorship, a commercial company or a cooperative, entered in the commercial register.
• Duty of care. Under Article 19 paragraph 2, the trustee manages the separate estate, preserves its value and uses it in line with its purpose.
• People. Under Article 20, management must include at least two qualified persons, with suitable training and sufficient professional experience.
• Capital. Under Article 22, the minimum capital of asset managers and trustees is CHF 100,000, paid in cash, with appropriate guarantees or professional liability insurance.

These are the supervisory building blocks. They are about the operator. A family looking at Switzerland is therefore choosing a regulated service provider, and the regulatory perimeter is part of what it is choosing. The supervisory body and the FINMA context are covered in the comparison of regulated and lightly regulated seats.

For the purposes of this page, the key contrast is that Swiss law answers "who may act as a professional trustee" in a written, checkable way. How New Zealand structures that question for trustees resident there is for a New Zealand adviser to explain.

Registers: what the Swiss facts show and what they do not

On 1 October 2026 the Swiss law on the transparency of legal entities came into force and the transparency register, kept by the Federal Office of Justice, started operating. The reporting period varies from one month to two years depending on the entity, and a supervisory authority within the Federal Department of Finance checks the data.

One point deserves care. The official announcement refers to "legal entities" and "legal persons". It does not mention trusts. A reader should therefore not assume that a trust, as such, is entered in that register, nor assume that it is not. Whether and how a given structure is caught depends on the entities around it: a company held by the trust, for instance, may have its own reporting duties. This is a question for Swiss counsel, applied to the actual structure.

The wider picture of what is disclosed where is set out in trust registers and privacy. For New Zealand, the post-reform disclosure rules on foreign trusts are exactly the kind of detail that changes and that depends on the facts of each trust. Do not rely on a summary written elsewhere; ask a New Zealand practitioner for the current position in writing.

Side-by-side grid

The grid is deliberately cautious. Where the available facts are silent about New Zealand, it says so instead of filling the cell.

A practical comparison table

Two rows say the same thing on both sides on purpose. Automatic exchange of information (AEOI, based on the CRS) follows the residence of the settlor, beneficiaries and controlling persons, and the status of the accounts, rather than the label of the country. Moving a trust does not by itself remove a reporting duty that attaches to a person.

Banking and custody

A trust's bank accounts are opened under the onboarding rules of the bank, not under the trust law of the seat. A Swiss bank will apply anti-money-laundering rules (AMLA, or LBA in French) and will ask for the trust deed, the identity of the settlor, the beneficiaries and any protector, and the source of the assets. A New Zealand bank does the same under its own rules. For the practical differences, read banking and custody by seat.

Families sometimes assume that a Swiss trustee automatically means a Swiss bank, or that a New Zealand trust has to bank locally. Neither follows. Custody can be separated from the seat, and the trustee's duty is to choose custody that suits the trust's purposes.

Substance

For a Swiss professional trustee, substance is largely built into the licensing framework: a registered entity, at least two qualified persons in management, and minimum capital. These are requirements on the operator, so a family does not have to build substance around the trust to the same degree. Whether any additional substance is needed for companies owned by the trust depends on where they sit and what they do; see economic substance and trusts.

For New Zealand, the question to put is concrete: which local persons and functions does the structure rely on, and what would a regulator or a bank expect to see?

Who this comparison is for

The page is most useful in three situations.

A family with an existing New Zealand trust. Example: a family based in Lausanne whose parents set up a trust in New Zealand through a local adviser. After the disclosure reform, they want to know what would be disclosed, to whom, and whether a different seat would change that. The first step is to ask the New Zealand adviser exactly what is filed and by whom. The second is to look at the mechanics of a move, covered in moving a trust between jurisdictions and, for the Swiss end, in relocating an existing trust to Switzerland.

A person connected to New Zealand by residence, nationality or property. A settlor, beneficiary or asset owner with a link to New Zealand will usually have local tax and reporting questions that no Swiss document can answer. A Swiss trustee can administer a trust, but it cannot decide New Zealand tax questions for the family. Put them to a New Zealand-qualified adviser, with the trust deed, the list of parties and the asset schedule in hand.

A family comparing several seats. New Zealand is one of many options. For the wider field, see how to choose a trust jurisdiction and the neighboring comparison of Switzerland and Singapore, which is another seat often weighed against a common-law one.

What to ask a New Zealand adviser

• Does the trust fall within the foreign trust category, and has that changed since the reform?
• What information is filed about the settlor, trustee and beneficiaries, and who can see it?
• What happens to those filings if the trustee changes or the trust moves?
• Are there tax consequences for parties resident elsewhere?
• What would be needed to exit cleanly?

What to ask on the Swiss side

• Is the proposed trustee licensed under FinIA, and which supervisory body oversees it?
• Which governing law would apply to the deed, and how does Switzerland recognize it?
• What does the trustee need from the family for anti-money-laundering checks?
• How would the structure be reported under automatic exchange?
• What are the limits of Swiss protection against creditor or heirship claims? Protection has limits in every seat; see forced heirship and trusts.

Costs depend on the structure and are indicated after the confidential assessment.