Conflicts of Interest - Fiduciary - Thematic Review 2025

Summary

This is a thematic review report published by the Guernsey Financial Services Commission summarising findings from a 2025 review of how fiduciary licensees identify, manage and record conflicts of interest. It is not a change to the law or rules, but sets out observed good practice and areas for improvement against existing requirements under the Fiduciary Law, the Fiduciary Rules, the Principles of Conduct and the Code of Corporate Governance.

• Scope of review: Questionnaires were sent to 37 primary and personal fiduciary licensees (about 25% of the population), with a 100% response rate, followed by interviews and a review of policies, procedures, registers and CMP testing at a sample of firms.
• Key findings: Licensees generally have adequate controls to meet regulatory standards, use conflicts registers, and embed conflicts policies through training and compliance monitoring, but some firms focus too narrowly on board-level conflicts and do not always record the specific controls applied to each conflict in their registers.
• Common conflict types: Individuals or corporate entities acting in roles within client structures, competing interests between clients (including beneficiaries), personal or financial incentives (gifts, retrocessions, revenue-linked remuneration), personal relationships, and structural/governance conflicts such as intragroup or shareholder-director influence.
• Regulatory expectation: The Commission expects licensees to review the types of conflicts of interest present in their business and assess the effectiveness of their management of them in light of the report's findings.

The report is informational and does not introduce new rules, fees or deadlines, but it signals supervisory expectations that fiduciary licensees should benchmark their conflicts of interest frameworks against the findings and good practice examples described.

Key obligations

• Licensees should review the types of conflicts of interest arising in their business and assess the effectiveness of their existing management controls in light of the report's findings
• Licensees should ensure conflicts of interest registers appropriately record not only identified conflicts but also the specific controls implemented to manage each conflict

Applies to

fiduciary licensees, primary fiduciary licensees, personal fiduciary licensees, trust and corporate service providers, investment licensees