Swiss Platform Verification Checklist

Before you fund a single loan on any Swiss P2P lending or crowdlending platform, there is a set of checks worth running once, in full, rather than picking up piecemeal from a marketing page. This checklist is that set. It is organised around the questions that determine what happens to your money if things go wrong, not around the features a platform advertises.

Work through it item by item against the specific platform you are considering. Most of the answers should be findable in the platform’s terms, its regulatory disclosures, or a direct question to support. If a platform cannot or will not answer one of these plainly, treat that as information in itself. Pair this checklist with the risk screener for a fuller structured assessment, and with Swiss P2P lending platforms for background on how to categorise platforms before you compare them.

Identity & licence

• Identify the exact legal entity operating the platform and where it is registered.
• Check whether that entity, or a partner it uses, holds any FINMA authorisation and confirm it against FINMA’s public registers.
• Confirm which Swiss laws the platform states apply to its loans, such as the Consumer Credit Act for personal loans.

Client money & custody

• Ask how your uninvested cash is held between deposit and the moment it is lent out.
• Confirm whether client funds are legally segregated from the platform’s own operating funds.
• Find out what happens to outstanding loans and your claim on them if the platform becomes insolvent.
• Check whether a third party, rather than the platform itself, services repayments and holds the loan contracts.

Loan quality & transparency

• Check whether the platform publishes historical default and delinquency figures, not just projected returns.
• Confirm how loans are diversified across your investment, and whether you can end up concentrated in a small number of borrowers.
• Read the underwriting criteria the platform states it applies before listing a loan.
• For secured loans, check the valuation date and method behind the stated security.

Fees & exit

• List every fee the platform charges, including ones taken from repayments rather than shown upfront.
• Check whether a secondary market or early-exit option actually exists, or whether your capital is locked until maturity.
• Confirm how currency conversion is handled and priced if loans are denominated in a currency other than Swiss francs.

Documents & support

• Request the actual loan agreement template, not just the platform’s summary description of it.
• Check whether investor support is reachable by a named channel and responds within a stated timeframe.

None of these checks require specialised financial training. They require reading the documents a legitimate platform should already be willing to show you, and being willing to walk away if it is not. Use the risk screener if you want a scored, structured version of this same process.