What the data shows
Switzerland is the world's 8th-largest fossil investor.
For a country of roughly 0.1% of the world's population, that is a striking rank. Judging by the scale of its investment in climate-damaging facilities worldwide, Switzerland is a major global player that must urgently take action.
One bank holds most of it: UBS alone accounts for 57% of the Swiss total.
No other institution comes close. There is no path to moving Switzerland's fossil money that does not begin with UBS, an actor stewarding money that is often ours.
The money funds fossil fuel expansion, not transition.
Around 94% of Swiss fossil fuel holdings sit in companies still developing new reserves and infrastructure rather than winding down. This is not a bet on the sector's decline but on its continued growth, which is exactly what genuinely public Swiss National Bank (SNB) money, publicly mandated pension savings, and cantonal money should not be financing.
The SNB alone holds more fossil exposure than every cantonal bank combined.
The SNB's USD 9.3 billion in fossil fuel shares dwarfs even the largest cantonal bank, Zürcher Kantonalbank, at USD 5.3 billion. Both are genuinely public money, and most of what they hold funds companies still expanding fossil fuel production rather than winding it down.