New ‘industry’ being driven by international regulatory reporting

Thursday 02 March 2017

Fiduciary and administration provider SANNE says new international tax disclosure and transparency rules could help create a new ‘industry’ in outsourced regulatory reporting.

The firm says it seen growing demand for its regulatory reporting services as governmental and tax reporting authorities implement the global Common Reporting Standard (CRS) and the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FACTA), which require a range of clients to disclose information or face fines.

Under CRS, participating jurisdictions are required to obtain information from their financial institutions and automatically exchange that information with other participating jurisdictions on an annual basis. 

FACTA requires foreign financial institutions to report to the US Internal Revenue Service any information in respect of foreign assets held by American taxpayers or by foreign entities substantially owned by US taxpayers.

SANNE Managing Director Steve Sokić, who heads the company’s Corporate and Private Client group globally, commented: 

‘As a global financial services leader, SANNE can and is meeting demands for such reporting services. While some ultra-high net worth individuals may question the impact of CRS and FACTA, it's really important to understand the need to be compliant with such regulatory measures.’

"Many financial services providers including many of our corporate clients - who themselves undertake CRS and FATCA reporting for their clients - have expressed concern about such additional burden on their resources. In a number of cases, they have started to outsource such reporting to firms like ours and others that have emerged (e.g. the big four accounting firms)."

"Should CRS continue in its current form, we could see the emergence of a new industry around outsourced regulatory reporting as demand for such expertise can only grow in this increasingly regulated global environment."

Lisa Aune,Director in SANNE’s corporate and Institutional division, said: "We’ve built up and have further plans to expand our tax and regulatory reporting services in order to help our clients understand their obligations in readiness for the new regime.

"As well as FATCA and CRS, new requirements emerging off the back of Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPs) and the introduction of beneficial ownership registers mean that an unprecedented volume of information is now going to be exchanged by tax authorities on an annual basis."