Financial Crime

Further to the news release of 8 January 2020, referring to the introduction of exit interviews for individuals who held the position of MLRO and/or MLCO with a bank or fiduciary firm, the Commission has decided to extend the pilot initiative until the end of December 2020. The initiative has proved useful and has provided supervisory staff with a greater understanding of the MLRO/MLCO role(s)...

Over the last three months, various international supervisory bodies have reaffirmed the planned timelines for transition away from LIBOR to alternative reference rates, such as SONIA (Sterling Overnight Index Average) or SOFR (Secured Overnight Financing Rate). Firms should therefore continue to assume that they will be unable to rely on LIBOR being published beyond the end of 2021 and should...

The Financial Crime Risk Return for the reporting period 1 July 2019 to 30 June 2020 (the “Return”) will be available for completion on the Online Submissions Portal in July 2020. The submission deadline is 31 October 2020. Following the Commission's previous announcements, updates made to the 2020 Return include additional questions regarding the different classifications of politically exposed...

The Commission has today, issued in final form, the revised Handbook on Countering Financial Crime and Terrorist Financing (“the Handbook”). The Commission has made these amendments, to the Handbook, in order 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. These...

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...

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 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.

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...