General

On the 4 day of June 2020 the Commission imposed, on an agreed basis, a discretionary financial penalty (under section 11D of The Financial Services Commission (Bailiwick of Guernsey) Law, 1987) on Standard Chartered Trust (Guernsey) Limited of £140,000. This was as a result of historical failures to meet the Minimum Criteria for Licensing in respect of Schedule 1 of The Regulation of Fiduciaries...

The Commission’s Financial Crime Division is recommencing its routine financial crime inspections to firms with immediate effect. Routine inspections were suspended on 19 March 2020 to enable firms to deal with the immediate operational impact of the coronavirus lockdown. Financial Crime inspections are resuming now as the finance industry has demonstrated its resilience and firms have generally...

On 29 May 2020, the Guernsey Financial Services Commission, acting to protect the interests of investors and pursuant to powers granted to it under the Protection of Investors (Administration and Intervention) (Bailiwick of Guernsey) Ordinance of 2008, made an application to the Court to have administrators appointed to Continent Worldwide Limited, a company licensed under the Protection of...

Following our announcement of 24 March 2020: https://www.gfsc.gg/news/commission-allows-more-time-firms-complete-key-financial-returns ], the Commission has been pleased to note the resilience of the Bailiwick’s finance sector including the widespread ability to work from home effectively. This operational resilience, taken together with recent States of Guernsey announcements regarding exit from...

The world’s circumstances have changed fundamentally with the arrival of COVID-19 which has become a major threat to global wellbeing and economic prosperity. The extraordinary measures taken by governments around the world in response to the threat posed by COVID-19, have inevitably and significantly altered any forward-looking statements and hence, in publishing its 2019 annual report today, the...

The Financial Action Task Force ("FATF") has released a guidance paper regarding COVID-19-related money laundering and terrorist financing risks, which can be accessed directly on the FATF website . This paper and other FATF guidance can be found within the FATF Guidance section of the Commission's Legislation and Guidance page.

The Financial Services Commission (Bailiwick of Guernsey) Law, 1987 (the “Financial Services Commission Law”) The Protection of Investors (Bailiwick of Guernsey) Law, 1987 (the “POI Law”) The Insurance Managers and Insurance Intermediaries (Bailiwick of Guernsey) Law, 2002 (the “IMII Law”) The Insurance Business (Bailiwick of Guernsey) Law, 2002 (the “Insurance Law”) The Regulation of Fiduciaries...

In response to operational adaptation that firms are undergoing as a result of restrictions imposed to tackle the spread of Covid-19, the Commission has decided to ease some of the timeframes in the Handbook rules. Specifically, those timeframes relating to the approval of business risk assessments and policies and procedures and for reviews of existing customers have been put back. The changes...

The Commission is undertaking a short consultation on changes proposed to rules and guidance in the Handbook on Countering Financial Crime and Terrorist Financing (version issued on 29 November 2019) to take into account the Bailiwick of Guernsey’s National Risk Assessment (“NRA”) on money laundering (“ML”) and the financing of terrorism (“FT”) which was published in January 2020. It is...