Two months on from the 2023 STEP Cayman Conference. That time has flown – but this year more generally has got off to a flying start, particularly for Saffery Trust (Cayman) Limited (“Saffery Trust”).
The Conference itself felt in many ways like the culmination point of our Cayman strategy which has been years in the making: beginning, in the public eye at least, with the launch of our offering now way back in 2020 (the reality of course is that our Cayman work predated this by some time).
The growth and development of our offering in those intervening years has been fantastic and a testament to the confidence we – and our clients – have in Cayman as an outstanding jurisdiction in which to do business.
Following regulatory approval and the completion of our acquisition of Holdun Trust, we formally established our stand-alone office and launched Saffery Trust in the final quarter of 2021. Our launch party in the stunning gardens of the Cayman Islands National Gallery in January was a brilliant way to bring our newly combined team, including and Laura Homer, together.
But they certainly haven’t been the only new faces to join us this year.
With our new Cayman office as a launch pad we’ve added to our team concertedly and at pace – building out what we believe is a best in class offering to clients with truly brilliant people: including Andrew Needham as Independent Director and maritime and corporate expert Natasha Bunting. We also appointed experienced Cayman operator and Trust Director who will be supporting the Saffery Trust teams in the Cayman Islands, Dubai, Guernsey and Switzerland, travelling extensively between the offices..
All told, our team has more than trebled in size since we first began operating in Cayman in 2020.
This was a real point of celebration for us at the STEP conference, where we were pleased to join with friends and colleagues among more than 300 attendees to discuss and exchange ideas about the role and value of Cayman in an increasingly complex international economic environment.
Sitting on a panel with Andrew Miller (Bedell Cristin) and Sarah Jacobson (Day Pitney LLP) brought home much of what was, and continues to be, central to our Cayman strategy.
That is, providing our clients access to flexible structuring solutions. As we talked about on the panel, there is clearly still an important place for the traditional trust structure, however there are alternative options and opportunities to create bespoke solutions for clients and their families – including Cayman STAR trusts and Foundation Companies
Cayman continues to be a jurisdiction of choice given the wide range of trusted and secure structuring options it affords, along with a legal, regulatory and financial system which is internationally recognised as both competitive and forward thinking (take for example recent reforms around digital assets) as well as being robust and precedent-setting in its judicial decision making.
The mood of the conference was certainly that this will continue to be the case. The future looks bright in Cayman, and we are very pleased to be a part of it.
