Trusts and beneficial ownership: Guidance for data collection and sharing
Information scope
When a trust is registered, its basic information should be submitted, including, where they exist:
- its name;
- any tax identification number (TIN) or other authoritative identifier; [8]
- the jurisdiction under which the trust has been established;
- the local term for the type of trust or trust-like arrangement.
The trust deed (or equivalent legal contract), and any other relevant documentation, such as a letter of wishes, may also be submitted as part of the registration process. Even if the deed is required to be submitted, structured data [9] about the known parties and other registrable persons related to the trust should be submitted via a form, plus any information that cannot be accessed elsewhere about the beneficial owners of any parties.
Parties to the trust
As a minimum, a trust registry will collect and manage, as structured data, information necessary to identify:
- all trustees;
- current beneficiaries; [10]
- the settlor;
- any protector;
- other registrable persons (see “Special cases” below).
A trust or trust-like arrangement may have equivalent, or similarly well-defined but different, roles. Any of the above (or equivalent) roles might be performed by a legal entity or a natural person, or mediated via a further legal arrangement.
Where a natural person is party to a trust, or is otherwise registrable, information necessary to identify them includes: [11]
- their full name;
- their nationality(ies);
- their full date and place of birth;
- all countries of residence (and related residential address(es));
- for countries of residence or nationality: type of national identification document (e.g. passport, biometric residence card, or national identity card) and reference number, and tax identification number.
(Some types of individuals may not be registrable or may be legally exempt from disclosure of their identity, for example, minors. If this is the case, submission forms and guidance should make this clear.)
Where a legal entity is party to a trust, or is otherwise registrable, its basic identifying information and beneficial ownership information may be available to competent authorities via a corporate registry or similar platform. [12] Therefore, information necessary to identify it and its beneficial owners should be:
- the entity name;
- its legal form;
- the jurisdiction in which it operates;
- the jurisdiction’s corporate registry and the entity’s unique identifier in that registry (and any other identifier or reference needed to access its beneficial ownership information).
Additionally, any role in a trust might be mediated via a further legal arrangement (e.g. guardianship, nomination, or a different trust or power of attorney). For these reasons, a registry should also collect information necessary to identify any natural or legal person exercising control over a mediating arrangement, including:
- the type of mediating arrangement;
- the mediating arrangement’s role in relation to the trust;
- details identifying (as above) the natural or legal persons who are party to the mediating arrangement (or an identifier or reference for the mediating arrangement which will allow access to such details).
Forms for information submission should be designed to handle all the permutations described above. And it should be clear from the information submitted whether a natural person or legal entity has multiple roles in a trust arrangement.
Special cases
Beneficiary classes
In cases where the beneficiaries of a trust arrangement are a large class of persons, or where membership of the class changes regularly, regulations should set out the conditions under which beneficiaries are not registrable. (For example, regulations might specify that if all the individuals in a class cannot be reasonably identified by the trustees, only those individuals in receipt of benefits from the trust are registrable.) In all cases, a description of the class should be submitted.
Objects of a power
In a discretionary trust, trustees may be bound by the trust deed or other relevant documents to select beneficiaries from a list or class of natural or legal persons. These persons are “objects of a power” (of the trustees).
Where an identified person will only become a beneficiary of a trust at the discretion of the trustees (or if trustees fail to exercise their discretion), regulations should set out the conditions under which they are registrable.
Effective control
A natural person who is not directly a party to a trust may nonetheless exercise effective control over its operation. Regulations should set out the conditions under which they are registrable.
Onward beneficial ownership information
It may be that a legal entity is party to a trust and its beneficial ownership information is not available from another register.
In such a case, information about the entity’s identity should be submitted as above. Regulations may also require that each natural person who is a beneficial owner of the entity is registrable.
Footnotes
[8] See: Kadie Armstrong and Stephen Abbott Pugh, Using reliable identifiers for corporate vehicles in beneficial ownership data (s.l.: Open Ownership, 2023), https://www.openownership.org/en/publications/using-reliable-identifiers-for-corporate-vehicles-in-beneficial-ownership-data/.
[9] See: Open Ownership, Open Ownership Principles – Structured data (s.l.: Open Ownership, updated 2024), https://www.openownership.org/en/principles/structured-data/.
[10] Persons who are currently benefiting or who will benefit from a trust arrangement are referred to here as “current beneficiaries”.
[11] See FATF Recommendation 24: FATF, The FATF Recommendations.
[12] See FATF Recommendation 24: FATF, The FATF Recommendations.