Both the new schemes bear Concept’s Aurora branding, and have been set up in conjunction with a licensed Gibraltar trust company, Redmount Trust Company.
Roger Berry, co-founder and managing director of Concept, said the Aurora Europa Pensions Trust and Aurora Europa Pensions Contract will enable the company to re-enter the market for new QROPS business, while also looking after those of its clients who were caught out by the 2012 de-listing.
310 schemes were removed and just three left intact after HMRC declared that most of Guernsey’s QROPS failed to pass muster because, the Revenue said, they treated Guernsey-resident scheme members differently from non-resident scheme members.
At that time, Concept had seven multi-member Guernsey qualifying recognised overseas pension schemes (QROPS) on the HMRC list.
Why Gib
Berry said Concept Group had “prioritised” Gibraltar ahead of such other currently popular QROPS domiciles as Malta and the Isle of Man because it enjoys European Union status with respect to financial services, and offers a “straightforward 2.5% tax rate” on income benefits.
In addition, it has “a versatile legal framework”, which, combined with the EU status and tax rate, “easily accommodates members and advisers with a UK-centric mind-set who are used to the flexibilities of UK registered-schemes, such as SIPPs”.
“While other jurisdictions may have more double tax treaties, in many circumstances the time and costs of dealing with these will be trumped by the ease Gibraltar offers,” Berry added.
One of the two Gibraltar schemes is contract-based rather than trust-based. This, Berry said, was introduced in expectation of market demand from people who live in civil-law countries, such as France, Spain and Italy, where the trust concept is unfamiliar.
Concept Group was founded by Roger Berry and Jackie Eley, the company’s technical director in 2004, and currently administers assets in excess of $1bn (£612.5m, €727m).
Gibraltar’s history as a QROPS jurisdiction includes a period between 2009 and 2012 during which its providers voluntarily suspended transfers, pending clarification of issues that had been raised by HMRC, about the way such schemes were taxed by the territory’s authorities. As reported, that clarification came in the form of amendments to the jurisdiction's income tax legislation in a way that was designed to satisfy concerns voiced by Britain’s tax authorities.
Sources say the Gibraltar regulator is understood to be reviewing its studying its current system for monitoring the QROPS industry, with an eye towards possibly tweaking its regulations governing the pensions industry, but this could not immediately be confirmed.
