Jersey and Guernsey consult on who may see beneficial ownership

Jersey would release beneficial owners at 25 per cent or more, and five fields only: the name, the month and year of birth, the country of residence, the nationality, and the nature and extent of the beneficial interest. Guernsey's list runs close at the same threshold, with name, date of birth, jurisdiction of residence, nationality, and the grounds on which the person is considered a beneficial owner. Neither island proposes bulk downloads as a matter of course, though both float grouped requests where several related entities serve one stated purpose.

Jersey adds a necessity test on top of purpose. An applicant would have to show a specific interest in the entity concerned, and that what is sought is proportionate to the work being done, measured against the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018. Both papers carve out disclosure that would put a beneficial owner at serious risk, and both provide an appeals route. Guernsey asks one thing Jersey does not, which is whether a beneficial owner should be able to see a record of who has accessed their information.

In most fund groups the Jersey or Guernsey entity is administered by a corporate services provider, and the beneficial ownership information was assembled at incorporation from documents the group supplied. Since then the ownership above it has moved through commitments, transfers, restructurings and the ordinary churn of a management company, and each movement was recorded somewhere else. While only the registry and the regulator can read the filing, that is a filing risk. It turns into a reputational one the day a counterparty, a journalist or a research organisation can apply and set the register beside what the group says elsewhere. The two do not have to satisfy a public expectation. They do have to agree with each other, and with the documents behind them.

Nothing is enacted, no application route exists, and no applicant is waiting. That is the argument for doing the work now. Take each Channel Islands entity and answer four questions in writing: what beneficial ownership was filed, on what date, by whom, and against which document. Then set the answers beside the ownership the group records today. Every difference needs a cause written next to it, whether that is a transfer nobody notified, a threshold reading that has changed, or a person whose interest is now held through another vehicle. A difference with a written cause is a governance item. A difference nobody can explain is the one to worry about. Decide at the same time who keeps the answer current: if the provider makes the filing, somebody in the group still has to tell them when it has changed, and the instruction has to leave a trace.

Alethia keeps entities, ownership, officers, documents, bank accounts and mandates in one governed register, so the ownership of a Jersey or Guernsey company lives on the entity itself and the structure chart is drawn from it. The filing sits there too: a compliance obligation against the entity, with a due date for the next review and the filed confirmation attached as the document behind it. That is what a reconciliation runs against, and the audit trail shows when a holding changed and who changed it. Nothing is submitted to either registry from here and neither registry's records are read; the register holds the group's own position, visible to the people responsible for the entity. So when somebody eventually asks who owns the Jersey company, the answer is a page with a date on it.