Compliance for trusts

Trustees are subject to increasingly numerous and far reaching compliance and regulatory obligations. While seeking to navigate the regimes aimed at increasing transparency and minimising tax evasion worldwide, at the same time as ensuring compliance with data protection rules, trustees must have regard to their fiduciary duties and other trust law principles, such as confidentiality.

Beneficial ownership registers, Money Laundering Regulations 2017 and trustees

In 2014, the G20 countries agreed high-level principles on beneficial ownership transparency.

To implement these principles in the UK, the government introduced legislation which requires most UK companies to keep a register of people who have significant control over a UK company (PSC register) from 6 April 2016 in the same way as they keep a register of members or directors. In contrast to the register of members, which records the legal owners of the shares in a company, the PSC register is designed to record the identities of the individuals who are the ultimate beneficial owners and controllers of the company. This information has to be provided to Companies House when the confirmation statement is delivered. Companies House publishes all unprotected PSC information

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Question of the week: Where a trust of a life policy otherwise falls within the definition of an 'excluded trust' set out in paragraph 4 of Schedule 3A of the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017, does it lose that excluded trust status if it opens a non-interest bearing bank account in order to pay insurance premiums for the policy?

This Q&A considers whether a trust of a life policy, which otherwise falls within the definition of an 'excluded trust' as set out in the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017, Sch 3A, para 4 loses its excluded trust status if it opens a non-interest bearing bank account to pay insurance premiums for the policy.

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