Switzerland – Archiving services – Zentrale Archivierung für Konkursakten

All Zurich notaries are simultaneously bankruptcy offices and land registry offices. Zurich bankruptcy offices are obliged to retain not only their own files from a bankruptcy proceeding but also the business records of the respective bankrupt company. The statutory retention period is generally 10 years (for individual files 30 years). In particular, for the ten-year retention of business records, the notaries currently operate nine so-called central archives. The nine central archives are located at seven sites and are each affiliated with a local bankruptcy office/notary. The management of an archive (stock inventory, additions and removals) is carried out by an employee of the notary from the local notary's office. An IT application provides an overview of the utilisation of the individual archives. The increasing number of bankruptcies in the canton of Zurich is leading to an increase in the volume of bankruptcy and business records and the existing central archives of the notaries are reaching, or have already reached, their capacity limits. For this reason, and to avoid additionally burdening the bankruptcy offices of the canton with storage services, the management of the Notaries' Inspectorate has decided to outsource the storage of bankruptcy records as a future-proof, scalable solution.