Swiss Bankers Association Privacy Notice

1. What is this Privacy Notice about?

The Swiss Bankers Association (Swiss Banking) (also “we”, “us”) collects and processes personal data that concern you or other individuals (“third parties”). We use the word “data” here interchangeably with “personal data”.

In this Privacy Notice, we describe what we do with your data when you use www.swissbanking.ch or our other websites (collectively “website”), obtain services or products from us, interact with us in relation to a contract, communicate with us or otherwise deal with us. When appropriate, we will inform you in writing in good time of any additional processing activities not mentioned in this Privacy Notice. In addition, we may inform you about the processing of your data separately, for example in consent forms, terms and conditions, additional privacy notices, forms and other notices.

If you disclose data to us or share data with us about other individuals, such as co-workers, we assume that you are authorised to do so and that the relevant data are accurate. You confirm that this is the case when you share such data with us. Please make sure that these individuals have been informed about this Privacy Notice.

This Privacy Notice is aligned with the requirements of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (“FADP”) and the revised Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (“revFADP”). However, the applicability of these laws depends on each individual case.

2. Who is the controller for processing your data?

The Swiss Bankers Association (Swiss Banking), Basel (the “Swiss Bankers Association” or “SBA”) is the controller for the processing of data by the Swiss Bankers Association (Swiss Banking) under this Privacy Notice, unless we tell you otherwise in an individual case, for example in additional privacy notices, on a form or in a contract.

You may contact us for data protection concerns and to exercise your rights under Section 11 as follows:

Swiss Bankers Association (Swiss Banking) 
Aeschenplatz 7
P.O. Box 4182
CH-4052 Basel
[email protected]

3. What data do we process?

We process various categories of data about you. The main categories of data are the following:

• Technical data: When you use our website or other online offerings, we may collect the IP address of your terminal device and other technical data in order to ensure the functionality and security of these offerings. These data include logs recording the use of our systems. In order to ensure the functionality of these offerings, we may also assign an individual code to you or your terminal device (for example in the form of a cookie, see Section 12). Technical data are anonymised on our systems and do not in principle permit us to draw conclusions about your identity.
• Registration data: Certain offerings, for example competitions and services (such as login areas of our website, newsletters etc.), can only be used with a user account or registration. You must provide us with certain data for this purpose, and we collect data about the use of the offering or service. If we issue a voucher to you for one of our contractual partners, we may share some of your registration data with the relevant contractual partner or receive such data (see Section 7). Registration data may be required in relation to access control to certain facilities. We generally keep registration data for 12 months from the date the use of the service ceases or the user account is closed.

• Communication data: When you are in contact with us via the contact form, e-mail, telephone, chat, letter or any other means of communication, we collect the data exchanged between you and us, including your contact details and the metadata of the communication. If we record or listen in on telephone conversations or video conferences, for example for training and quality assurance purposes, we will inform you specifically of this fact. Such recordings may only be made and used in accordance with our internal policies. You will be informed if and when such recordings take place, for example by an indication during the video conference in question. If you do not want to be recorded, please notify us or leave the (video) conference. If you simply do not want your image to be recorded, please turn off your camera. If we wish or need to determine your identity, for example in relation to a request for information, press access etc., we collect data to identify you (for example a copy of an identification document). We generally keep these data for 12 months from the last exchange between us. This period may be longer where required for evidentiary purposes, to comply with legal or contractual requirements, or for technical reasons. E-mails in personal mailboxes and written correspondence are generally kept for at least 10 years. Recordings of (video) conferences are usually kept for 24 months.

• Master data: Master data are the basic data that we need, in addition to contract data (see below), for the performance of our contractual and other business relationships or for marketing and promotional purposes, such as name and contact details as well as information about, for example, your role and function, your bank details, history, powers of attorney, signature authorisations and declarations of consent. We process your master data if you are a member, customer or other business contact or work for one (for example as a contact person of the business partner), or because we wish to address you for our own purposes or for the purposes of a contractual partner (for example as part of marketing and advertising or with invitations to events, vouchers, newsletters etc.). We receive master data from you (for example when you make a purchase or as part of a registration), from parties you work for, or from third parties such as contractual partners, associations and address brokers, and from public sources such as public registers or the internet (websites, social media etc.). We may also process information about third parties as part of master data. We generally keep master data for 10 years from the last exchange between us or from the end of the contract. This period may be longer if required for evidentiary purposes, to comply with legal or contractual requirements, or for technical reasons. 

• Contract data: These are data collected in relation to the conclusion or performance of a contract, for example information about the contracts and the services provided or to be provided, as well as data from the period leading up to the conclusion of a contract, information required or used for performing a contract, and information about feedback (for example complaints, feedback about satisfaction etc.). This includes information about third parties. We generally collect these data from you, from contractual partners and from third parties involved in the performance of the contract, as well as from third-party and public sources. We generally keep them for 10 years from the last contract activity or from the end of the contract. This period may be longer where necessary for evidentiary purposes, to comply with legal or contractual requirements, or for technical reasons.

• Behavioural and preference data: Depending on our relationship with you, we try to tailor our products, services and offers to you. For this purpose, we collect and process data about your preferences. We do so by evaluating information in our domain. The data processed for this purpose are already known to us (for example when you use our services). We anonymise or delete these data when they are no longer relevant for the purposes pursued. We describe how your behaviour is tracked on our website in Section 12.
• Other data: We also collect data from you in other situations. For example, data that may relate to you (such as files, evidence etc.) are processed in relation to administrative or judicial proceedings. We may also collect data for health protection (for example as part of health protection concepts). We may obtain or create photos, videos and sound recordings in which you may be identifiable (for example at events, with security cameras etc.). We may also collect data about who enters certain buildings or has access rights and when (including in relation to access controls, based on registration data or lists of visitors etc.), who participates in events or campaigns (for example competitions) and when, and who uses our infrastructure and systems and when. Moreover, we collect and process data about our members; in addition to master data, these include information relating to the exercise of their rights and the conduct of events (for example general meetings). The retention period for these data depends on the processing purpose and is limited to what is necessary. This ranges from a few days for many security cameras, to a few weeks for contact tracing and visitor data, which are usually kept for 3 months, to several years or more for reports about events with images. Data relating to you as a member are kept in accordance with the law on associations.

Much of the data set out in this Section 3 is provided to us by you (through forms, when you communicate with us, in relation to contracts, when you use the website etc.). If you wish to enter into contracts with us or use our services, you must also provide us with certain data, in particular master data, contract data and registration data, as part of your contractual obligation under the relevant contract. When using our website, the processing of technical data cannot be avoided. If you wish to gain access to certain systems or buildings, you must also provide us with registration data. However, in the case of behavioural and preference data, you generally have the option of objecting or not giving consent.

To the extent permitted by law, we also collect data from public sources (for example debt collection registers, commercial registers, the media or the internet, including social media) or receive data from public authorities and other third parties (such as address brokers, associations, contractual partners, internet analytics services etc.).

4. For what purposes do we process your data?

We process your data for the purposes explained below. Further information is set out in Sections 12 and 13 for online services. These purposes and their objectives represent our interests and potentially those of third parties. You can find further information on the legal basis of our processing in Section 5.

We process your data for purposes related to communication with you, in particular in relation to responding to inquiries and the exercise of your rights (Section 11) and to enable us to contact you in case of queries. For this purpose, we use in particular communication data and master data, as well as registration data in relation to offers and services that you use. We keep these data to document our communication with you and for training purposes, quality assurance and follow-up inquiries.

We process data to conclude and administer memberships and contractual relationships as well as to fulfil obligations relating to these.

We process data for marketing purposes and relationship management, for example to send our members, customers and other contractual partners advertising for our own products and services and those of third parties (for example advertising partners). This may happen in the form of newsletters and other regular contacts (electronically, by post or by telephone), through other channels for which we have contact information from you, or as part of marketing campaigns (for example events, contests etc.) and may also include free services (for example invitations, vouchers etc.). You can object to such contacts at any time (see at the end of this Section 4) or refuse or withdraw consent to be contacted for marketing purposes.

We further process your data to improve our services and operations and for product development.

We may also process your data for security and access control purposes.

We process personal data to comply with laws, directives and recommendations from authorities and internal regulations (“compliance”).

We also process data for the purposes of our risk management and as part of our governance, including business organisation and development.

We may process your data for further purposes, for example as part of our internal processes and administration or for training and quality assurance purposes.

5. On what basis do we process your data?

Where we ask for your consent for certain processing activities, we inform you separately about the relevant processing purposes. You may withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future by providing us with written notice (by post) or, unless otherwise stated or agreed, by sending an e-mail to us; see our contact details in Section 2. For withdrawing consent for online tracking, see Section 12. Where you have a user account, you may also withdraw consent or contact us also through the relevant website or other service, as applicable. Once we have received notification of withdrawal of consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose(s) you originally consented to, unless we have another legal basis to do so. Withdrawal of consent does not, however, affect the lawfulness of the processing based on the consent prior to withdrawal.

Where we do not ask for consent for processing, we process your personal data based on the need to do so in order to initiate or fulfil obligations in relation to a membership or a contract with you (or the entity you represent) or on a legitimate interest on our part or that of a third party in the particular processing, in particular in pursuing the purposes and objectives set out in Section 4 and in implementing related measures. Our legitimate interests also include compliance with legal regulations, insofar as this is not already recognised as a legal basis by applicable data protection law (for example in the case of the GDPR, the laws in the EEA and Switzerland).

Where we receive sensitive personal data (for example data about political opinions, religious or ideological beliefs), we may process your data on other legal bases, for example, in the event of a dispute, as required in relation to a potential litigation or for the enforcement or defence of legal claims. In some cases, other legal grounds may apply, which we will communicate to you separately as necessary.

6. What applies in case of profiling and automated individual decisions?

We may automatically evaluate personal aspects relating to you (“profiling”) based on your data (Section 3) for the purposes set out in Section 4 if we wish to determine preference data or to detect misuse and security risks, to perform statistical analysis or for operational planning. We may also create profiles for these purposes, i.e. we may combine behavioural and preference data, as well as master data, contract data and technical data relating to you, in order to arrive at a better understanding of you as a person with your various interests and other characteristics.

In both cases, we pay attention to the proportionality and reliability of the results and take measures against misuse of these profiles or profiling. Where these can result in legal effects or significant disadvantages for you, we generally ensure human review.

In certain situations, it may be necessary for the efficiency and consistency of decision-making processes that we automate discretionary decisions that can result in legal effects or potentially significant disadvantages for you (“automated individual decisions”). In these cases, we will inform you accordingly and take the measures required by the applicable law.

7. With whom do we share your data?

In relation to our contracts, the website, our services and products, our legal obligations or protecting our legitimate interests and the other purposes set out in Section 4, we may disclose your personal data to third parties, in particular to the following categories of recipients:

• Service providers: We work with service providers in Switzerland and abroad who process your data on our behalf or as joint controllers with us or who receive data about you from us as separate controllers.

• Members: Data may be shared within the Swiss Bankers Association for the purposes of disseminating information among members or opinion-forming.  
• Contractual partners and customers: This refers primarily to our customers and other contractual partners as this data disclosure results from the respective contracts. If you work for one of these contractual partners, we may also disclose data about you to that partner in this regard. These recipients also include contractual partners with whom we cooperate.
• Authorities: We may disclose personal data to agencies, courts and other authorities in Switzerland and abroad if we are legally obliged or entitled to make such disclosures or if it appears necessary to protect our interests. These authorities act as separate controllers with respect to the data they receive from us about you.

• Other persons: This means other cases where interactions with third parties follows from the purposes set out in Section 4, for example the media and associations in which we participate or if you are included in one of our publications.

All of these categories of recipients may involve third parties, meaning that your data may also be accessible to them. We can restrict the processing by certain third parties (for example IT providers), but not by others (for example authorities, banks etc.).

We reserve the right to make such disclosures even of secret data (unless we have expressly agreed with you that we will not disclose such data to certain third parties, except if we are required to do so by law). Your data nevertheless continue to be subject to adequate data protection in Switzerland and the rest of Europe, even after disclosure. For disclosure to other countries, the provisions of Section 8 apply. If you do not wish certain data to be disclosed, please let us know so that we can review whether and to what extent we can accommodate your concern (Section 2).

In addition, we enable certain third parties to collect personal data from you on our website and at events organised by us (for example press photographers, providers of tools on our website etc.). Where we have no control over these data collections, these third parties are sole controllers. If you have concerns or wish to exercise your data protection rights, please contact these third parties directly. See Section 12 for the website.

8. Are your personal data sent abroad?

As explained in Section 7, we disclose data to third parties. These are not all located in Switzerland. Your data may therefore be processed in both Europe and the USA or, in exceptional cases, any country in the world. In particular, you must be aware that your data may be sent to other European countries and the US, where the service providers we use are located (e.g. HubSpot Germany GmbH, certain service providers listed under 12 below).

If a recipient is located in a country without adequate statutory data protection, we contractually oblige the recipient to comply with the applicable data protection rules, unless the recipient is already subject to a legally accepted set of rules to ensure data protection and we are unable to rely on an exemption. An exemption may apply, for example, in case of legal proceedings abroad or in cases of overriding public interest or if the performance of a contract requires disclosure, if you have consented or if you have made the data available generally and have not objected to their processing.

Please note that data exchanged via the internet are often routed through third countries. Your data may therefore be sent abroad, even if the sender and recipient are in the same country.

9. For how long do we process your data?

We process your data for as long as our processing purposes, the legal retention periods and our legitimate interests in documentation and keeping evidence require it or storage is a technical requirement. You will find further information on the respective storage and processing periods for the individual data categories in Section 3 and for cookies in Section 12. If there are no contrary legal or contractual obligations, we will delete or anonymise your data once the storage or processing period has expired as part of our usual processes.

10. How do we protect your data?

We take appropriate security measures in order to ensure the confidentiality, integrity and availability of your personal data, to protect them against unauthorised or unlawful processing, and to mitigate the risk of loss, accidental alteration, unwanted disclosure or unauthorised access.

11. What are your rights?

Applicable data protection laws grant you the right to object to the processing of your data in some circumstances, in particular for direct marketing purposes, for profiling carried out for direct marketing purposes and for other legitimate interests in processing.

To help you control the processing of your personal data, you have the following rights in relation to our data processing, depending on the applicable data protection law:

• The right to request information from us as to whether we process your data, and if so which data;
• The right to have us correct data if it is inaccurate;
• The right to request erasure of data;
• The right to request that we provide certain personal data in a commonly used electronic format or transfer it to another controller;
• The right to withdraw consent, where our processing is based on your consent;
• The right to receive, upon request, further information that is helpful for the exercise of these rights.

If you wish to exercise the above rights in relation to us, please contact us in writing, at our premises or, unless otherwise specified or agreed, by e-mail; you will find our contact details in Section 2. In order for us to be able to prevent misuse, we need to identify you (for example by means of a copy of an identification document if there is no alternative means of identification).

You also have these rights in relation to other parties that cooperate with us as separate controllers – please contact them directly if you wish to exercise your rights in relation to their processing. See Section 12 for the website.

Please note that conditions, exceptions or restrictions apply to these rights under applicable data protection law (for example to protect third parties or trade secrets). We will inform you accordingly where applicable.

If you do not agree with the way we handle your rights or with our data protection practices, please let us know. If you are located in the EEA, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with the competent data protection supervisory authority in your country.

12. Do we use online tracking techniques?

We use various techniques on our website that allow us and third parties engaged by us to recognise you during your use of our website and possibly to track you across several visits. This Section informs you about this.

In essence, we wish to distinguish access by you (through your system) from access by other users, so that we can ensure the functionality of the website and carry out analysis and personalisation. We do not intend to determine your identity. However, the technologies we use may be designed in such a way that you can be recognised as an individual visitor each time you access the website, for example by our server (or third-party servers) assigning a unique identification number to you or your browser (in the form of a “cookie”).

We use these technologies on our website and allow certain third parties to do so as well. However, depending on the purpose of these technologies, we may ask for your consent before they are used. You can access your current settings here. You can also set your browser to block or deceive certain types of cookies or alternative technologies, or to delete existing cookies. You can also add software to your browser that blocks certain third-party tracking. You can find more information on the help pages of your browser (usually with the keyword “privacy”) or on the websites of the third parties set out below.

We distinguish the following categories of cookies:

• Necessary cookies: Some cookies are necessary for the functioning of the website or for certain features. For example, they ensure that you can move between pages without losing information that was entered in a form. They also ensure that you stay logged in. These cookies are only temporary (“session cookies”). If you block them, the website may not work properly. Other cookies are necessary for the server to store options or information (which you have entered) beyond a session (i.e. a visit to the website) if you use this function (for example language settings, consents, automatic login functionality etc.). These cookies remain valid for up to 36 months.
• Performance cookies: In order to optimise our website and related offers and better adapt them to the needs of the users, we use cookies to record and analyse the use of our website, potentially beyond one session. We use third-party analytics services for this purpose. We have listed them below. Before we use such cookies, we ask for your consent. You can withdraw your consent at any time through the cookie settings here. Performance cookies remain valid for up to 14 months. Details can be found on the websites of the third-party providers.
• Marketing cookies: We and our advertising partners have an interest in targeting advertising as precisely as possible, i.e. only showing it to those we wish to address. We have listed our advertising partners below. For this purpose, we and our advertising partners – if you consent – use cookies that can record the content that has been accessed. This allows us and our advertising partners to display advertisements that we think will interest you on our website as well as on other websites that display advertisements from us or our advertising partners. These cookies can remain valid for a period from a few days to several months, depending on the circumstances. If you consent to the use of these cookies, you will be shown related advertisements. If you do not consent to them, you will not see fewer advertisements, but simply another random advertisement.

We may also integrate additional third-party offers on our website, in particular from social media providers. These offers are deactivated by default. As soon as you activate them (for example by clicking a button), these providers can determine that you are using our website. If you have an account with a particular social media provider, it can assign this information to you and thereby track your use of online offers. These social media providers process these data as separate controllers.

We currently use offers from the following service providers:

13. Which data do we process on our social network pages?

We may operate pages and other online presences on social networks and other platforms operated by third parties and collect the data about you described in Section 3 and subsequent sections. We receive these data from you and from the platforms when you interact with us through our online presence (for example when you communicate with us, comment on our content or visit our online presence). At the same time, the platforms analyse your use of our online presences and combine these data with other data they have about you (for example about your behaviour and preferences). They also process these data as separate controllers for their own purposes, in particular for marketing and market research purposes (for example to personalise advertising) and to manage their platforms (for example what content they show you).

We process these data for the purposes set out in Section 4, in particular for communication, marketing purposes (including advertising on these platforms, see Section 12) and market research. You will find information about the applicable legal basis in Section 5. We may disseminate content published by you (for example comments on an announcement), for example as part of our advertising on the platform or elsewhere. We or the operators of the platforms may also delete or restrict content from or about you in accordance with their terms of use (for example inappropriate comments).

For further information on processing by platform operators, please refer to the privacy information of the relevant platforms. There you can also find out about the countries where they process your data, your rights of access and erasure of data and other rights as a data subject, and how you can exercise them or obtain further information. We currently use the following platforms:

• Facebook: Here we operate the page Swiss Banking - Schweizerische Bankiervereinigung. The controller for the operation of the platform for users from Europe is Facebook Ireland Ltd., Dublin, Ireland. Its privacy notice is available here.
• LinkedIn: Here we operate the page Swiss Banking - Schweizerische Bankiervereinigung. The controller for the operation of the platform for users from Europe is LinkedIn Ireland Unlimited Company, Dublin, Ireland. Its privacy notice is available here.
• Twitter: Here we operate the page Swiss Banking - Schweizerische Bankiervereinigung. The controller for the operation of the platform for users from Europe is Twitter International Unlimited Company, Dublin, Ireland. Its privacy notice is available here.
• YouTube: Here we operate the page Swiss Banking - Schweizerische Bankiervereinigung. YouTube is a subsidiary of Google Ireland Limited, Dublin, Ireland. Its/Google’s privacy notice is available here.

14. Can we update this Privacy Notice?

This Privacy Notice is not part of a contract with you. We can change this Privacy Notice at any time. The version published on this website is the current version.

Last updated: 1 September 2023