Discretionary trust with a private trust company
A private trust company (PTC) is a company set up just to be the trustee of your family's trust, so the family has a say without owning the assets. This guide shows where it sits, who controls it, how the person who set up the trust can keep some powers without breaking it, and why Guernsey's 2025 guidance matters to families who thought they didn't need a licence.
The family has a say through the PTC's board, rather than controlling the trust directly — and that difference is what keeps the trust valid.
- Decisions
- Payouts and investment decisions are made by the PTC board, minuted, and checked against the trust deed and the letter of wishes.
- Distributions
- Cash moves up from the companies to the trust, then to family members when the trustee decides.
- Reporting
- Under CRS (the international exchange of tax information), a trust run by a professional or private trustee is usually a 'financial institution'; the settlor, the protector and family members who receive payouts get reported to their tax offices.
- Succession
- Nothing passes under a will. Keeping it going depends on renewing the PTC board from one generation to the next.
What the PTC is for
Families don't like handing control of a family business to a big trust company that doesn't understand it. And big trust companies don't like holding one large, hard-to-sell, risky business. A private trust company solves both. It's a company whose only job is to be trustee of that family's trusts, with a board that mixes family members, trusted advisers and independent professionals.
The PTC itself is deliberately owned outside the family, usually by a non-charitable purpose trust or a foundation, so nobody owns the trustee of their own trust.
Keeping some powers without breaking the trust
Jersey's Article 9A and similar Cayman rules let the settlor keep real powers — directing investments, appointing and removing trustees, vetoing payouts — without making the trust invalid.
The limit is practical, not written in law. If the settlor still really decides everything, a court or tax office in their own country may treat the assets as still theirs: calling the trust a sham, taxing the settlor on it, or letting creditors claw the assets back. Our test is simple: has the trustee ever said no to a request, and written down why?
The 2025 Guernsey update
In 2025 Guernsey's regulator clarified when a PTC setup becomes fiduciary business that needs a licence. It looks at whether outside administrators are used, how fees work, and how widely 'the family' is defined. Setups created years ago without a licence can find they now need one as the family grows.
The fix is usually to restructure — serve fewer trusts, or move the administration — but it has to be done on purpose. Jersey, Cayman and Singapore each have their own exemption conditions, and none of them carry over to the others.
CRS: who gets reported
CRS is the system countries use to swap information about each other's taxpayers. When a professional trustee or PTC runs the trust, the trust is usually treated as a 'reporting financial institution', and the settlor, the protector and family members who receive payouts are reported. If the trust is instead classed as a 'passive' entity, the reporting happens through the bank or custodian that holds its accounts.
Either way, the family's names reach their home tax offices. Design the structure expecting that, not trying to get around it.
UK-connected families after April 2025
The remittance basis (the old non-dom treatment) was abolished from 6 April 2025 and replaced by a four-year foreign income and gains regime. Most of the protection that used to shield offshore trusts set up by non-doms went with it. Trusts built on the old rules may now mean the settlor is taxed on the trust's income and gains as they arise.
This is the most common reason we're asked to review an existing PTC structure. Often the structure itself is fine, and only the tax analysis and the payout policy need rebuilding.
- A family member owning the PTC's shares directly, which undoes the separation the whole structure is for.
- Board minutes that record decisions but never the discussion behind them — the first thing anyone challenging the trust asks for.
- Outgrowing Guernsey or Jersey's exemption conditions as the family gets bigger, so the PTC suddenly needs a licence.
- The settlor using their reserved powers so completely that the trustee has never made a decision of its own.
- Never rechecking the CRS classification after the trust's assets changed.
- Structures built for UK non-doms before April 2025 that nobody has reviewed since the rules changed.
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