Made for Swiss self-employed & SMEs
A fiduciary in Zug takes on a new client company and has to open the full due-diligence file before any work can begin. A notary in Lausanne prepares a property transaction and must document who the parties really are. Both know the law is clear — identify the client, look at who stands behind them, and record what you found — and both feel the same quiet dread as the paperwork piles up.
Swiss fiduciaries and notaries sit on the front line against money laundering. The Geldwäschereigesetz (GwG) asks you to know your client before you act for them: identify them, establish the beneficial owner, understand the purpose of the relationship, and keep a written record of it all. None of this is optional, and none of it is difficult in any single step. It is heavy because it is repetitive, scattered, and easy to get subtly wrong.
Why due diligence feels so heavy
The burden is rarely the law itself. It is everything around it:
- The duty is real. A missing or sloppy file is not a small mistake — it is the first thing an examiner checks, and it can carry serious consequences.
- The information is scattered. Identity documents, register extracts, shareholder lists and the client's own explanations arrive in different formats, at different times.
- The fear of getting it wrong. Every file feels slightly different, so you rebuild the checklist from memory each time.
The result is familiar: the file grows slowly, gets finished at the last minute, and never feels quite complete.
A calm routine in three steps
You do not need new software, and you do not need to become a compliance expert overnight. You need a simple, repeatable routine where the AI does the mechanical parts and you keep the judgement.
Step 1 — Gather everything in one place
Create one folder per new client and drop in everything you already have: the identity document, the commercial register extract, the shareholder or partner details, and the client's own explanation of what the relationship is for. Do not sort or summarise yet.
Step 2 — Let the AI prepare the summary and the checklist
Hand the folder's contents to the AI and ask it for two things: summarise who the client is, and draft the due-diligence checklist against your own structure. A prompt like this does the heavy lifting:
You are helping me prepare a client due-diligence file for a Swiss fiduciary. Below are the documents I have for a new client. (1) Summarise who the client is: legal form, registered address, main activity, and who the directors and beneficial owners are. (2) Then draft a short due-diligence checklist based on Swiss GwG practice: identity verified, beneficial owner established, purpose of the relationship clear, risk level assessed, documentation complete. For each point, tell me what is still missing. Tone: factual, neutral, no opinions. Documents: [paste].
Step 3 — Review, complete, document
Read the summary once, clear the open points with the client or your own records, and file the completed checklist with the client's documents. The file is now complete, traceable, and ready for the next review. The AI never decides who the client is — you do.
What the AI does well — and what stays with you
- Extracting the facts: names, roles, addresses and ownership percentages pulled out of messy documents.
- Building the checklist: the same complete structure for every file, so nothing is forgotten.
- Spotting gaps: the AI flags what is missing or unclear before an examiner does.
What stays with you is the professional judgement: whether a client or a structure is high risk, where an extra question is needed, and what the final record must say. The AI never signs the file and never makes the call.
A note on data and privacy
Due-diligence files contain passport numbers, addresses and ownership details — exactly the kind of data that must not go into a public chatbot. Use a local model or a zero-retention service (such as a Swiss or enterprise tier of Claude or ChatGPT), or anonymise the documents first and add the real names back yourself at the end. The GwG and the Data Protection Act are not optional, and the right AI setup respects both.
The outcome
A file that used to take an afternoon and a nagging sense of unease now takes one calm hour. Every new client gets the same complete, traceable due-diligence record, you stop dreading the onboarding paperwork, and when an audit comes you hand over a tidy file instead of a scramble.
