International Trusts Act (as amended 2021)
Seychelles International Trust Formation
A Seychelles International Trust separates legal ownership from beneficial enjoyment of assets — settled for asset protection, succession planning, or holding assets on behalf of beneficiaries who may not yet be ready (or able) to hold them directly. It's governed by the International Trusts Act, as amended in 2021.
A trust is not a company — there are no shares, no directors and no separate legal personality. Instead, the settlor transfers assets to a trustee, who holds and manages them according to the terms set out in the trust deed, for the benefit of one or more beneficiaries. Because the trustee, not the settlor, holds legal title, assets placed correctly in trust ahead of any dispute sit outside the settlor's personal estate — which is the mechanism behind the asset-protection use case.
Seychelles requires that at least one trustee be a locally licensed corporate service provider, which is where we come in: we act as trustee (or co-trustee alongside a professional you nominate), maintain the trust's accounting records, and keep the register of trustees, beneficiaries and settlors at our registered office. None of that is filed publicly. A letter of wishes can guide our exercise of discretion without binding it legally — useful where a settlor wants influence over outcomes without converting the trust into something a court would treat as their own property.
Trusts work well alongside an IBC rather than instead of one: a common structure has a Seychelles Trust holding the shares of an operating IBC, so the trading entity's ownership sits inside a succession-ready structure from day one, rather than needing to be restructured later when circumstances change.
Best suited for
- Multi-generational succession and estate planning
- Asset protection from future, unforeseen claims
- Holding structures where a corporate trustee's independence matters
Licensed corporate trustee required
At least one trustee must be a licensed ICSP.
Private, non-public records
Accounting records and an up-to-date register of trustees, beneficiaries and settlors must be kept at the trustee's registered office (not public).
Flexible beneficiary structuring
Trusts can name individuals, classes of beneficiaries, or purposes, and can incorporate letters of wishes to guide (without legally binding) trustee discretion.
Separate from your IBC
A trust and an IBC solve different problems — a trust holds and protects; an IBC trades and invoices. Many clients use a trust to hold the shares of an operating IBC.
Frequently asked
Formation questions, answered directly
What's the difference between a Seychelles Trust and a Foundation?
A trust is a common-law relationship where a trustee holds legal title to assets for the benefit of named beneficiaries — there's no separate legal entity. A foundation, by contrast, is a civil-law style entity with its own legal personality, useful for clients from civil-law jurisdictions where the trust concept isn't recognised. See our jurisdiction and structure comparison for a side-by-side view. The practical difference shows up most clearly when a bank, court or tax authority in the client's home country has to make sense of the structure: a civil-law institution often has no direct legal concept for 'the trustee owns it but doesn't benefit from it,' whereas a foundation — which most civil-law systems already recognise in some form — requires far less explanation. Neither structure is inherently 'better'; the right choice depends mostly on where you and your counterparties are based, and we'll walk through both with you before you commit to one.
Who can act as trustee?
At least one trustee of a Seychelles International Trust must be a Seychelles-licensed International Corporate Service Provider (ICSP) — we act in this capacity, maintaining the trust's accounting records and its register of trustees, beneficiaries and settlors at our registered office, in accordance with the Trusts Act. You can appoint us as sole trustee, or as co-trustee alongside a professional you nominate — for example your own lawyer or a trust company in another jurisdiction — provided that professional is comfortable acting jointly and we're satisfied with their own compliance standing. Individual, non-licensed persons cannot act as the Seychelles-based trustee on their own; the licensing requirement exists specifically so that every Seychelles trust has a regulated, accountable party responsible for its administration, which is also what gives banks and counterparties confidence in the structure when they review it.
Is the trust deed public?
No. The trust deed and the register of beneficiaries and settlors are held privately by the trustee and are not filed on any public register. What is reported, under the Beneficial Ownership Act 2020, is the underlying beneficial ownership information — held on our internal register and reported to the FSA and Financial Intelligence Unit's central database, which itself isn't open to public search. So the confidentiality here operates at two levels: the commercial terms of the trust deed itself (who gets what, and under what conditions) stay private between the parties and us as trustee, while the identity of the beneficial owner is still visible to regulators for compliance purposes. If a bank or counterparty asks to see evidence of the trust's existence, we can typically provide a certified extract or letter of registration without disclosing the deed's full contents.