General

The Guernsey Financial Services Commission ("GFSC") was pleased to note the recent political agreement reached between the European Council and the European Parliament on an EU-wide classification system, or "Taxonomy", which will provide businesses and investors with a common language to identify what economic activities can be considered environmentally sustainable. The detailed criteria...

The Commission is pleased to announce that, following a comprehensive recruitment process, Charisma Lyall has been appointed as the Commission’s next General Counsel. Charisma will be replacing Philip Nicol-Gent who will be returning to the UK later this year having worked in the island for the past twenty years. Philip has been the Commission’s General Counsel for six and a half years and prior...

Please be advised, that with effect from January 2020, the Commission will be introducing exit interviews for individuals who held the position of MLRO and/or MLCO with a Bank or Fiduciary firm. This is a six month pilot initiative, and following our risk based approach, will apply only to individuals who have departed from a MLRO or MLCO position at a Fiduciary or Bank Licensee since the start of...

Form upgrades Further to our previous news article regarding the forthcoming changes to the forms on the OS and PQ Portals, the following forms are now available in the new format: 126a - Fiduciary - Pension Scheme or Gratuity Scheme Quarterly Return 132 - Insurance Manager Annual Return 145 - Investment Quarterly Return 200 - Other Notification 220 – Outsourcing 226 - Surrender Registration It...

The Commission has today removed Iceland from Appendix C (Equivalent Jurisdictions) of the Handbook on Countering Financial Crime and Terrorist Financing and issued an instruction for all specified business to ensure that full customer due diligence has been applied to all existing business relationships connected to Iceland by 31 January 2020. This action follows the Financial Action Task Force’s...

Third Quarter 2019 Investment Funds The net asset value of total funds under management and administration has decreased in Sterling terms during the last quarter by £9.8 billion (-3.3%) to £286.1 billion. Over the past year, total net asset values increased by £6.1 billion (2.2%). Open-ended Schemes Within these totals, Guernsey domiciled open-ended funds increased over the quarter by £0.9...

The Commission has today issued, in final form, the revised Handbook on Countering Financial Crime and Terrorist Financing ("the Handbook"). The Commission has revised the Handbook, in order to allow firms to advance work on revising their business risk assessments and policies, procedures and controls to take account of the provisions of Schedule 3 and the rules and guidance in the Handbook...

Section 3(1)(y) of The Regulation of Fiduciaries, Administration Businesses and Company Directors, etc. (Bailiwick of Guernsey) Law, 2000 After due consideration, the Commission will be amending our approach to specific discretionary exemptions (an “exemption”) in two ways: 1) To clarify the extent of an exemption. An exemption will only apply to the specific regulated activity in relation to the...

The Commission is pleased to announce that its application for membership of the NGFS has been accepted. Guernsey is the first island International Finance Centre to achieve membership of the NGFS in a move consistent with the international engagement element of Guernsey’s green finance strategy. The NGFS was established by eight central banks and supervisors following the "One Planet Summit" in...