The Guernsey Financial Services Commission has revised its guidelines regarding Private Trust Companies and its expectations of licensed fiduciaries which administer PTCs.

The main revision is the replacement of the previous requirement for a representative of an administering Full Fiduciary Licensee to sit on the board of a PTC with an approach that centres around results. From now on, every licensee that administers a PTC has to tell the JFSC that he/it will retain sufficient knowledge and information about the PTC’s ownership and control structure and about its activities to be satisfied that the PTC is effectively governed and that it complies with the right laws and regulatory rules. It may do this, for example, by any of, or a combination of:

• the provision of a director on the board of the PTC;
• the provision of a company secretary;
• the provision of authorised signatory; and
• monitoring and overseeing the PTC 'closely.'

There is also a new section on "licensed fiduciary recordkeeping." By virtue of s23(1)(a) Fiduciaries Law, the JFSC may ask a licensed fiduciary to provide it with information reasonably required for the JFSC to perform its functions. In this respect, a licensed fiduciary which administers a PTC or a PTF should make the records of the PTC or any PTF that it administers (including information about the PTC's beneficial ownership, its directors and its controllers, and about the settlor, beneficiaries and any protector (if relevant) of the trust or trusts for which it acts) available for regulatory inspection upon request. For the avoidance of doubt, this includes all PTCs and PTFs that a licensed fiduciary administers, whether or not the entity is acting by way of business.