Art. 4

1. Financial service providers shall assign the persons for whom they provide financial services to one of the following segments:
   1. retail clients;
   2. professional clients;
   3. institutional clients.
2. Retail clients are clients who are not professional clients.
3. Professional clients¹are:
   1. financial intermediaries as defined in the Banking Act of 8 November 1934²(BankA), the Financial Institutions Act of 15 June 2018³(FinIA) and the CISA⁴;
   2. ⁵ supervised insurance institutions;
   3. foreign clients subject to prudential supervision as the persons listed under a and b above;
   4. central banks;
   5. ⁶ public entities, institutions and foundations with professional treasury operations;
   6. occupational pension schemes with professional treasury operations and other occupational pension institutions providing professional treasury operations;
   7. companies with professional treasury operations;
   8. large companies;
   9. private investment structures with professional treasury operations created for high-net-worth retail clients.
4. Institutional clients⁷are professional clients as defined in paragraph 3 letters a to d as well as national and supranational public entities with professional treasury operations.
5. A large company is a company which exceeds two of the following parameters:

balance sheet total of CHF 20 million;

turnover of CHF 40 million;

equity of CHF 2 million. 6. Companies of a group that receive a financial service from another company from the same group are not deemed to be clients. 7. Financial service providers may refrain from client segmentation if they treat all clients as retail clients.