JayBee

JayBee groups its services into company setup, licensing, regulatory advice, compliance, risk management, outsourcing and education. For a new financial company, JayBee advises on the legal form, finds a domicile, directors and board members, and introduces banking or fintech partners. In licensing, the firm first checks whether a license is needed at all, then recommends a license type or SRO membership, prepares the application and guides the client through the procedure, also outside Switzerland.

Firms that do not want to build their own compliance department can outsource the function and use JayBee staff as external AML officer, compliance officer, risk manager or head of legal and compliance. The compliance work covers gap analyses, AML and KYC risk assessments, cross-border rules and the implementation of regulatory changes. On the risk side, JayBee sets up risk management frameworks and designs internal control systems for financial intermediaries.

For fintech and crypto companies, JayBee handles bank account support in Switzerland and abroad, business plan analysis, SRO applications, FINMA licensing and FINMA no-action letters. Token projects get legal opinions on token classification, prospectuses and SAFT agreements, the contracts under which investors buy tokens that a project will issue later. Members of the team advise on tokenization projects and RWA tokenization, and the firm also supports company sales and fundraising.

The liquidity provider and OTC desk FinchTrade announced a partnership with JayBee in November 2024. JayBee guided FinchTrade through SRO membership, obtained a FINMA no-action letter for the company and helped add RegTech tools for transaction monitoring and AML checks to the MarketGuard platform of FinchTrade.

For banks, JayBee optimizes risk and compliance processes, evaluates and introduces RegTech tools and manages remediation projects. When a bank plans a crypto offering, JayBee prepares the risk analysis for FINMA, screens crypto wallets and writes reports with extended due diligence checks that cover crypto assets.

The services for asset managers include membership in a supervisory organization, FINMA licensing and the setup of a crypto offering. JayBee also structures actively managed certificates (AMC) and drafts the key information documents and prospectuses that go with them.

JayBee works with software providers to check whether their IT tools meet regulatory requirements, tests and improves process flows and co-creates RegTech solutions. In the view of JayBee, compliance specialists remain necessary because regulation calls for individual, risk-based assessments, while most of the diligence work can be automated. Mateo Bilic, Compliance & RegTech Manager at JayBee, works on AI and compliance automation for clients.

JayBee also designs and teaches programs for universities and other schools, covering Swiss financial regulation, AML and sanctions, crypto legislation in Switzerland and the EU, and EU law such as MiCA and MiFID II. David Wicki-Birchler, head of the MAS Financial Markets Compliance at the HWZ in Zurich, credits Jürg Baltensperger with developing the CAS Digital Compliance Officer program for the school.

Jürg Baltensperger started JayBee in a coworking space in Zurich and leads the company as managing director. He holds a law degree from the University of Zurich and an MAS in risk management from the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences. He has spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos, at CV Summit in Zug and Zurich and at MROS, the Money Laundering Reporting Office Switzerland. Isabelle Broger, Pavels Kusnirenko and Ferdinand Grieger work with him as compliance and regulatory partners.

The ninth edition of the CV VC Top 50 Report named JayBee among the blockchain and crypto savvy law firms in January 2025. The investor CV VC publishes the report on startups, corporations and public bodies in the Crypto Valley of Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

JayBee AG has its registered office at Industriestrasse 22, 6300 Zug, and is entered in the commercial register of the canton of Zug under UID CHE-343.099.178. The company was first registered in Zurich in October 2017 and moved its registered office to Zug in 2021.

A professional financial intermediary under the Swiss Anti-Money Laundering Act must join a self-regulatory organization (SRO) that FINMA recognizes. The SRO sets the due diligence rules for its members and checks that they follow them, while FINMA supervises the SROs. JayBee prepares SRO membership applications for activities such as payment services, crypto custody with segregated wallets and asset management.

The FINMA fintech license allows a company to accept client deposits of up to CHF 100 million or hold crypto assets in collective custody, as long as it neither invests the deposits nor pays interest on them. JayBee advises on this license under Article 1b of the Banking Act and names uses such as multi-currency IBANs, debit card issuing and a crypto exchange without derivatives.

In Swiss practice, a no-action letter is the written answer FINMA gives when a company asks whether its planned business needs a license. FINMA analyzes the specific facts under financial market law and normally charges a fee for the review. JayBee prepares such requests for fintech and crypto companies and obtained a no-action letter for FinchTrade.

The AML training of JayBee is a live webinar in English on Microsoft Teams for staff of financial intermediaries in Switzerland. The basic course runs over two mornings and costs CHF 470 per person, and the advanced course takes one morning for CHF 340, both excluding VAT. Both cover money laundering and sanctions rules, the duties of SRO members and the due diligence the Anti-Money Laundering Act requires, plus a session on corporate housekeeping.