FINMA opens bankruptcy proceedings against FlowBank SA
Well, I hope no one has a part of their wealth their 
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So, I was right 4 years ago 
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It was just a matter of time, thank you for sharing.
Donât forget the FlowBank employee who heavily advertized in this forum 
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Actually it would be an interesting case study about a bankrupt broker, a situation we discuss so often but hardly anyone of us ever experienced. Does anyone has any âsegregated assetsâ there?
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I knew it!
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Hi. I have a lot of shares there. What shall I do?
Maybe you could request FlowBank support to move all your shares to another broker where you have an account ?
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Nothing.
FINMAâs primary aim is to protect depositors. In a first step the liquidator will therefore repay deposits up to CHF 100,000 (privileged deposits) to the clients concerned as quickly as possible. According to current calculations, the privileged deposits can be repaid in full out of the bankâs available funds. Therefore we do not expect the Swiss banksâ deposit insurance scheme (esisuisse) to be involved. Client custody accounts will also be segregated from the estate and repaid.
More information here:
Information letter to the clients of FlowBank SA
Secured deposits
Clientâs cash deposited with the Bank in Switzerland in an account opened in their name will be reimbursed in the short tem up to a maximum amount of CHF 100,000 (one hundred thousand Swiss francs).
The Liquidators are currently preparing the repayment terms and conditions, which will be communicated to the clients as soon as possible.
Segregation of custody assets
Custody assets according to Article 16 of the Banking Act (such as shares, bonds, funds, certificates etc.) remain the property of the clients, do not form part of the bankrupt estate and will be transferred to them subject to any compensation or restrictions.
The Liquidators are currently preparing the modalities of transfer, which will be communicated to the clients as soon as possible.
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Short story of FlowBank: from opening to bankruptcy in 60 messages. How time flows!
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It was discussed at some point that selling them, even if you can, would be actually a bad idea, because you move funds from segregated assets (stocks) to non-segregated ones (cash, protected to 100k CHF only). So I guess the best thing you can do is to waitâŠ
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As the Greek says: Panta rhei.
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You canât do it. Flowbank lost its banking license and everything is frozen. No transfer in/out, nor purchase/sale.
Clients have to wait for the liquidator to contact them and organise the securities transfer to another provider.
Extract from Flowbank website.
Not much you can do, unfortunately, just waitâŠ
Very sad, FlowBank was one of the few Swiss fintech/neobank with ambitions beyond Switzerland. There certainly was issues but I wonder why they could not raise to improve their reserves. I suspect that the FINMA took a precipitated action to try to look tough after the Credit Suisse debacle. Moreover, the press release mentions that the bank entered high risk deals without doing extensive due diligence. Iâm pretty sure this refers to their Cryptocurrency activities. FlowBank was known to be banking some stablecoin issuers and had ties with Binance. I would not be surprised if some anti-crypto sentiment explains a big part of this decision. Iâm not excluding that there wasnât something really rotten in there, but regulators will always assume out of the door that crypto = fraud. Crypto banks are probably gonna keep suffering more regulatory pressure and ultimately move to Singapore/Dubai or US if Trump wins.
They already had issues with audits in the past 2 years, I think there would have been plenty of time to fix things if they could/wanted.
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Iâm not in the head of FINMA but my understanding is that Switzerland tries to create a crypto friendly environment out of our usual âthereâs fees to make out of itâ stance. Crypto deposits actually have a legal framework and are regulated as such.
I could envision a situation where Swiss regulators would err toward caution in order to avoid a crypto scandal with a Swiss holder of deposits, especially one that could contaminate other deposits when a single entity accepts both crypto and traditional deposits but I wouldnât draw it as an anti-crypto sentiment.
If anything, that would be an attempt to protect the legitimacy of Swiss entities as legitimate holders of crypto deposits, so a pro-crypto stance.
Clever Saxo marketing team! 
Based on ex-employees feedback FlowBank management was not stable at all. They were making lots of hasty last minute decisions.
The initial big customers were also tied to the top management and this was driving development decisions in the wrong direction.