Reflections from the Contentious Trusts Circle Europe in Vevey

Kelly Watson, Director at Reckon, recently attended the prestigious Contentious Trusts Circle Europe hosted by ThoughtLeaders4 in Vevey, Switzerland.

This event brought together an elite group of senior practitioners who specialise in contentious private client work from a broad range of jurisdictions including the UK, Channel Islands, Caribbean, US, Asia andEurope, and focused on perspectives on early warning indicators of threats to structures, the impact of political and economic pressures on families and structures, and the practical issues trustees and families face when structures come under strain.  

The event also saw Dr Rebecca Harding, a leading authority on international trade economics, welcomed as a special guest to provide valuable insights to the conference attendees.

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Kelly’s top take-aways from the event are as follows:

1)   Preparation is key – in a world where the markets are seemingly continuing to perform along the lines of “business as normal”, almost in oblivion to the geopolitical tensions and activities, keeping a breast of global matters and diversification of assets are important.  There is no magic wand for trustees to protect the wealth within the structures they administer for families, but they can take steps to ensure that they, and those to whom relevant powers are delegated such as investment managers, are best placed to react quickly in a world that is rapidly moving.

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2)   New trustees are hard to find – trustees come in many different guises – small, large, independent, bank-owned, private equity-owned, but the people behind the companies are individuals and the personal nature of the role is such, that the selection of who to pick is still largely driven by the relationships between people.  

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3)   AI is good and bad – Clients should be reminded that freely accessible AI tools do not offer the same level of privacy and confidentiality as the secure AI systems used by their lawyers and trustees. When they take advice received and place it into such programmes, they are potentially irretrievably compromising the integrity of any legal privilege that might otherwise have applied.  Clients also need to be aware of the fact that AI is still learning and is thus making mistakes.  If AI is used to review, summarise and respond to advice, it can lead to increased fees as advisers must then wade through data generated by AI that isn’t always appropriate and / or correct.  AI is not a ready access adviser in your pocket, and it doesn’t always make things better.

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4)   Gruyere cheese made in Switzerland has few if any holes in it!