About SERV
Swiss Export Risk Insurance SERV helps to preserve and create jobs in Switzerland. It promotes Switzerland as a business location by making it easier for Swiss exporters to compete internationally.
SERV is an institution under the public law of the Swiss Confederation and is independent in its management. The organisation is subject to the supervision of the Federal Council, which appoints the Board of Directors and defines the strategic objectives for four years at a time. Swiss Export Risk Insurance SERV supports Swiss companies with their export transactions and makes it easier for them to access foreign markets.
Strategic goals of the Federal Council
For the 2024 – 2027 strategy period, the Federal Council is continuing with its previous goals: SERV will continue to contribute to the creation and safeguarding of jobs in Switzerland while helping Swiss companies to gain access to major infrastructure projects abroad. SERV will evolve in its role as a trade facilitator. The Federal Council also attaches great importance to ensuring that SERV’s services meet the needs of the Swiss export industry and that SERV remains internationally competitive. SERV will provide the Swiss Confederation with early notification of significant and longer-term developments and propose relevant solutions. For more information, see the PDF (in German).
Legal basis for SERV’s activities
SERV’s business policy is derived from the SERV Act and the SERV Ordinance, as well as the strategic requirements of the Federal Council. The SERV Act also determines the basis of the requirements that an insurance transaction must meet. If these requirements are met, SERV is able to insure the transaction. SERV complies with the commitments that Switzerland has signed up to under international agreements, including the OECD Export Credit Arrangement and the Berne Union Guiding Principles.
Subsidiarity
SERV’s insurance policies are supplementary to those offered by the private sector (Art. 6 para. 1 let. d SERVG). In principle, it insures only risks that are not marketable or for which insufficient private insurance options exist. SERV bases its distinction between marketable and non-marketable risks on the European Commission’s communications.
Economic viability
SERV operates on the principle of economic viability. This means that SERV’s premiums and other income must be sufficient to cover the risk and operating costs – meaning it functions without taxpayers’ money (Art. 6 para. 1 let. a SERVG).
Swiss content
SERV covers export transactions that are of Swiss origin or include an appropriate degree of Swiss content; an appropriate share of Swiss content being at least 20 per cent of the export transaction’s order value.
If the proportion of Swiss content is less than 20 per cent, an export transaction may still be insurable under certain conditions and at the exporter’s request. Where this is the case, SERV checks whether
- the value-adding activities of the exporter in Switzerland are the decisive factor in the successful conclusion of the export transaction or the overall success of the company, and
- insuring the individual export transactions contributes to creating and maintaining jobs at the company in Switzerland.
Current issues
As an institution under the public law of the Swiss Confederation, SERV follows the foreign and climate policy requirements of Switzerland and observes the relevant OECD Guidelines. For the 2024–2027 strategy period, the Federal Council expects SERV to implement a sustainable corporate strategy within the scope of its capabilities and to support decarbonisation as well as the transition to a green economy. In addition, Switzerland is working towards achieving the net zero by 2050 as part of global measures to combat climate change.
For this reason, SERV has identified various areas for action in a climate strategy. These include, on the one hand, greenhouse gas emissions from operations, the decarbonisation of the economy through incentives and the acquisition of green projects. On the other hand, it continues to create transparency through the measurement and reporting of climate exposure and maintains and seeks strategic partnerships in the field of climate.
SERV already offers special conditions for environmentally friendly projects within the framework of OECD provisions, including longer credit periods of up to 22 years and flexible terms of repayment. Furthermore, SERV actively participates in international expert discussions and knowledge exchange on climate topics.
SERV contributes to mobilising private capital for green projects and is committed to stepping up support for these in line with demand and the interests of the Swiss export industry (in 2025, for example, wind energy projects in Kosovo and the USA). As a rule, SERV does not support projects in the areas of coal, oil and peat, nor upstream gas extraction projects. At the same time, however, it is seeing a global increase in demand for gas power stations, which often remain important for energy supply and economic progress, especially in developing countries and emerging economies. This can result in conflicting objectives in insurance decisions, which SERV handles by systematically weighing up interests and risks and in close consultation with SECO.
Partial revision of the SERV Act
The Swiss Export Risk Insurance Act (SERVG) is around 20 years old and has not been subject to a fundamental review since SERV was founded. With constantly changing external influences and geopolitical challenges, in recent years SERV has increasingly found that it is reaching its regulatory limits. This hinders and sometimes even prevents SERV from fulfilling its mandate of supporting the competitiveness of Swiss companies. At the end of 2025, the Federal Council set the course for SERV’s necessary further development and mandated a targeted partial revision of the SERV Act. The Swiss export industry supports this legislative reform, so that it will continue to operate on a level playing field and remain internationally competitive.
The partial revision has two main aims. Firstly, it is to further reduce the administrative burden on Swiss exporters and give them even easier and quicker access to SERV’s insurance solutions. Secondly, conditions are to be created to enable to agile introduction of new products and to adapt them more flexibly to the changing needs of the export economy. For SMEs in particular, insurance solutions that support liquidity planning are growing in importance.
Consultation on the bill is due to take place in 2026 – and parliamentary deliberation is expected to take place in 2027.
