Academic partnerships for digital security

Swissquote’s partnership with ETH Foundation’s Zurich Information Security and Privacy Center (ZISC) is a long-term investment in digital trust. In a world where cybercrime, AI-driven fraud and data breaches are evolving rapidly, Swissquote chose to support ZISC with a CHF 2.5 million donation over five years to advance research and education in information security, fraud prevention and data protection. The aim is to help develop new methods to detect and counter digital threats and to strengthen the foundations of secure online banking for the whole ecosystem.

ZISC brings together leading researchers and industry partners to work on the next generation of security solutions. For Swissquote, the collaboration combines the bank’s deep industry knowledge with cutting-edge academic research, strengthening its approach to fraud detection and cyber resilience against increasingly sophisticated threats.

The decision to support ETH ZISC reflects the evolving landscape of financial crime and the need for sustained innovation in prevention capabilities. While traditional approaches remain effective, financial institutions must stay ahead of emerging threats. In this context, Swissquote is committed to designing smarter, more effective solutions that anticipate and adapt to an increasingly dynamic risk landscape.

ETH ZISC is an ideal partner to address these challenges. The centre combines scientific rigour in information security and adversarial systems with a strong track record of working with industry. It acts as a neutral research hub, collaborating with several financial institutions while maintaining full academic independence. For Swissquote, supporting ZISC is a way to treat fraud prevention as a collective challenge and to ensure that its own defences are informed by the best research available in Switzerland and beyond.

In August 2025, Swissquote formalised its commitment by signing a five-year agreement with ETH Zurich and confirming the CHF 2.5 million donation to ZISC. The partnership focuses on research into financial fraud in digital banking. This includes exploring secure and privacy-preserving mechanisms for sharing data and indicators related to fraudulent transactions, with the objective of improving early detection and collective response across the sector. Initial workshops brought together Swissquote’s Quantitative Research & Solutions and Information Security teams with ZISC researchers to map real-world challenges, agree on priorities, and define a structured research roadmap. Active research work is scheduled to start in 2026.

The collaboration is built on continuous knowledge exchange rather than one-off reports. ETH researchers, led by Prof. Srdjan Capkun, work on concrete problems inspired by Swissquote’s operational context, under strict data protection safeguards, and share insights, analytical results and prototypes through regular touchpoints and workshops. Swissquote experts in fraud prevention and data science discuss these findings, test ideas through threat modelling and controlled evaluations, and decide which approaches to take further. Not every research output is expected to be deployed, and there are no fixed promises on risk reductions or timelines. The true impact lies in stress testing assumptions, improving understanding of fast-evolving threats and integrating the most robust ideas into Swissquote’s long-term fraud resilience strategy.

At Swissquote, we don’t see digital trust as just another feature, it is a sovereign capability our clients deliberately choose. That is why, through the Swissquote Trust programme, we work closely with academia. It gives us perspectives that even a very mature bank could not develop alone: foresight, independence, and scientific depth.

Academic research gives us early insight into long-term risks such as post-quantum security, adversarial AI, and supply-chain threats, enabling us to protect clients through anticipation rather than reaction.

Supporting ecosystem-wide initiatives is equally critical. Fraud and cyber threats are systemic, cross-industry, and global by nature; no single institution can counter them in isolation. By contributing to shared standards, intelligence, and collective resilience, Swissquote helps harden the environment it depends on to protect clients and trust in the digital economy.

This partnership is a concrete expression of Swissquote Trust: trust engineered by design, governed over time, and protected by sovereign choices. We anchor security in scientific rigour, invest ahead of major technological shifts, and convert research into operational controls governed within our framework, ensuring innovation never compromises independence, accountability, or client trust.

— Nestor Verrier, Chief Operating Officer