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This is not something that Switzerland was happy to do; it took a lot of pressure to get them to stop being an asset haven for international tax avoiders.

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Minor technicality, but tax avoidance is legal. Saving in a tax-advantaged account is tax avoidance. The problem with what Switzerland was doing is that it was aiding and abetting tax evasion.

Most of the time people get this wrong the other way. I've never seen the evasion->avoidance transposition. So, I thought I might share. No harm meant. :)

To be precise: pressure from the US. Now the US is Switzerland.

Relevant: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Reporting_Standard

Many people are missing this point. US banks, until this point, do not exchange information on their foreign customers. FATCA is more like: Hey Hong Kong, Swiss, London, nice business you have over there, maybe I can get in the action too. All of the action actually.

And as a result of that the US is now the worlds largest offshore banking center for the rest of the world. It's a pretty safe place to hold your money, after all.

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