What is a Trust Company?

A Trust company manages the Legal and Financial administration of their mostly foreign clients. The clients can be corporations or individual private persons. Also, they provide other services such as Fiduciary services, Domicile services and in many cases they will become directors of the Dutch entity. All Trust Companies are registered at the DNB (De Nederlandse Bank)

Five categories of trust services:

1.

Being a director/partner of a legal entity/company
Ultimate beneficial owners of an international structure often arrange for their Netherlands-based object company to be managed or co-managed by a trust office.

2.

Providing an address or postal address for an object company and performing ‘additional activities, such as record-keeping or preparing and filing tax returns (domicile plus)
Additional activities include:

Advising or assisting object companies, with the exception of receptionist work only.
Preparing and filing tax returns.
Compiling, reviewing or auditing financial statements.
Performing any activities related to the compilation, reviewing or auditing of financial statements.
Record-keeping.
Recruiting directors.

3.

Selling or intermediating in the sale of legal entities.
Intermediation means that the trust company acts as an intermediary in the establishment of one or more agreements between the client and third parties. This involves more than just bringing the parties into contact; an intermediary performs activities to match supply and demand. Merely referring parties to others does not, therefore, qualify in principle as intermediation.

4.

Acting as a trustee.
The trust office can act as a trustee on the basis of a trust deed, for example for a shareholding.

5.

Provision of a conduit company.
If the trust company provides their customers with a conduit company, they are performing a trusted service. A conduit company (also referred to as an in-house company) is a company which belongs to the same group as the trust office and which the trust office uses for the benefit of one or more customers. Conduit companies are used among other things for:

The commercial exploitation of intellectual property rights, e.g. image rights, royalties and licenses.
Consultancy services.
Trade services.
Lending.