The Alpine state has until now rejected moving towards an automatic exchange of data with other jurisdictions although it has entered into a number of cross-border disclosure agreements, such as with the UK. In 2009, Switzerland’s historic bank secrecy laws were partly breached when authorities agreed to allow account data of some American UBS clients to be transferred to the US. This followed agreements by UBS to settle US civil and criminal charges of aiding tax evaders. Several Swiss banks no longer provide offshore banking to US citizens.

"If you ask me what automatic exchange of information is realistic for me, then there would be two main requirements from a Swiss point of view," Widmer-Schlumpf is reported to have said in Saturday's edition of Swiss daily Tages-Anzeiger.

Her requirements are that all other "meaningful" global financial centres also exchange data on an equivalent basis, and that the exchange extends to names tied to vehicles such as trusts linked to offshore accounts, she said. "We (the Swiss government) will begin discussing this in June with a perspective of several years out," she said.

The Swiss coalition government remains divided on the issue, even after European holdouts Luxembourg and Austria agreed last month to share data on accounts held by foreigners.