The number of corporate bankruptcies keeps climbing in Switzerland. Between January and September, 13,660 companies were declared insolvent, an increase of 38.4% compared with the same period last year, according to a press release published on Wednesday by the Swiss creditors’ association Creditreform and reported by the AWP news agency. If the current pace holds until December, 2026 could end at a record level.

Behind this figure, several elements deserve to be separated: what has already been observed, what is a projection, and what the statistic actually measures.

The facts: a steady rise since early 2025

The nine-month data are recorded facts. September confirms the trend: the increase there reaches 20.5% year on year and, for the first time, more than 1,800 bankruptcies were recorded in a single month.

September’s increase nevertheless remains well below the cumulative rise since January. Bankruptcies are still increasing, but the gap with last year is less pronounced in the most recent month available. A detail that matters for reading what follows.

A reform that changes the measurement

Creditreform links this trend to the revision of the Federal Act on Debt Enforcement and Bankruptcy, which came into force at the start of 2025. Since then, the number of bankruptcies has kept rising, the organisation notes. The amendment requires public-law claims against companies to be collected through bankruptcy proceedings. Previously, such claims could be collected by way of seizure.

This clarification opens up two readings of the same indicator. The first is mechanical: some of the cases that were once settled by seizure now end in bankruptcy, which inflates the statistic without the health of companies necessarily having deteriorated to the same extent. The second is more worrying: the increase would also reflect genuine payment difficulties in part of the economy. The press release does not make it possible to separate these two effects, and it would be risky to decide without more detailed data.

The projection: a possible record, with a condition

For 2026 as a whole, Creditreform expects bankruptcies to rise by 33.4%. In total, 19,100 companies could file for bankruptcy this year. This is an extrapolation, explicitly conditional on the current pace continuing, and not an established fact.

The projected annual increase is in fact lower than the one observed over nine months, which is consistent with September’s more moderate rise. The record mentioned therefore remains a hypothesis: it will depend on how the last quarter develops.

Individuals also affected

Personal bankruptcies are also rising, but at a much more moderate pace than corporate ones. Over the first nine months of the year, they concern 8,003 people, up 6.3% overall.

The breakdown shows contrasting dynamics. Among living persons, the increase reaches 17.2%. Bankruptcies following a death, which result from heirs renouncing an inheritance, rose by 3.8%. It is the first category that draws attention: it directly affects households, even if its increase remains far from that observed among companies.

More start-ups, but also more deregistrations

The picture is not uniformly bleak. Company formations rose by 2.1% between January and September, with 41,706 companies newly entered in the commercial register. Creditreform is sticking to its forecast of a new record for company formations in 2026, with 56,600 new companies, an increase of 1.7% compared with 2025. Here again, this is a forecast.

Deregistrations, however, grew more strongly, by 4.9%. As a result, net growth in the number of companies remains slightly below that of 2025. The business landscape continues to expand, but more slowly.

What this says about employment

The press release does not quantify the jobs affected. The number of bankruptcies alone does not say how many jobs disappear: it all depends on the size and activity of the companies concerned, which the published data do not detail. An increase driven in part by a change of procedure also does not carry the same weight for the labour market as a wave of closures of active businesses.

For employees, suppliers and creditors of the companies concerned, each procedure nevertheless translates into concrete uncertainty, whether in the form of unpaid invoices or an employer that ceases trading. Creditreform’s next figures will show whether the slowdown observed in September is confirmed or whether the year does indeed end with a record.

Sources

  • Allnews: “Le nombre de faillites s’envole en Suisse”