I am hoping someone can come up with a definitive answer here.
I have been trying to establish what my obligations are on registering trusts on the Trust Register. I have been obtaining ID for all trustees, but I am not sure whether I should also be obtaining ID of all beneficiaries (contingent interests etc) of the trust. I do not want to be in breach of MLR, however where does the line stop? In some cases, just registering one trust could take hours and hours.
Also, if it is an on-going trust and a declaration is necessary each year that the trust details are up to date, would you need to obtain all beneficiaries ID again, say every two years?
Any advice would be welcome.
If you are acting as agent, then you just need to carry out the regular AML checks that you would when acting for a trust. As you say, this might be ID for the trustees and a copy of the trust deeds. The TRS legislation doesn’t impose any additional verification role on agents registering trusts in the way that the register of overseas entities does.
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You appear to be conflating a number of different issues.
As a firm, you have an AML obligation to undertake a risk assessment for any new buiness relationship, as well as conduct suitable AML on the parties to that relationship. When engaging a trust client, as well as undertaking AML for your client you will also need to identify and take reasonable measures to verify the beneficial owners of that trust, including the beneficiairies. What is considered reasonable in these circumstances will vary from firm to firm, and is likely to also vary from trust to trust depending on any risk factors identified by your firm’s due diligence procedures and initial risk assessment. For example, the due diligence required for a small UK trust with UK resident individuals is going to be very different to the due diligence for a trust wiith material assets and individuals in a high risk non-UK juristictions, which could also include verification over sources of wealth. It may be satisfied with requestng ID and running verification, but equally it may be satisfied in other ways too depending on your firm’s procedures.
As well as undertaking this form of AML, as an obliged entity your firm is also obligated to review the TRS records for any trust that is entering into a new buiness relationship with your firm, and where any material discrepency is identifed in the TRS the trustees are required to correct this, failing which your firm is obliged to report these discrepencies.
Your question on whether or not your firm should be undertaking actual registrations on the TRS is then a matter for your trustees clients and what they wish to engage your firm to do, as per the terms of any engagement you may put in place.