Common Reporting Standard: Are Firms And Clients Ready?

As demands for more standardised levels of compliance grow internationally, Mark Le Ray of Saffery Champness Registered Fiduciaries looks at the ways in which firms and their clients are preparing.

A decade ago it would have been difficult to envisage the amount of compliance and reporting now required of the offshore financial services industry, not least the obligation to report clients' financial information to multiple jurisdictions around the world.

Yet the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) is now embedded in the private client landscape and the even more onerous Common Reporting Standard (CRS) has swallowed up Guernsey, Jersey, the UK, and 51 other jurisdictions as early adopters. These countries will report calendar year 2016 information by 30 June 2017 while a further 47 jurisdictions have committed to the CRS first reporting in 2018.