Trusts and beneficial ownership: Guidance for data collection and sharing
Information updates
Information about trusts is not static: the parties to a trust and its beneficial owners may change. Alongside a registration process, designers of trust registries should also consider how information should be updated, and under what circumstances.
Designers should take into account that:
- processes and guidance for information updates will be different from those for initial registration;
- the full range of events that trigger an update to information held will impact the design of processes and systems. Trigger events extend from trust-centred events, such as a minor reaching the age of majority and becoming registrable as a beneficiary, to register-centred administrative events, such as an annual information-confirmation process;
- the system should collect information about beneficiaries over the full lifetime of the trust, including the final beneficiaries of a trust when it is wound up;
- historic information about a trust will need to be retained for a designated period of time.