STEP’s GDPR working group recently hosted a roundtable event that enabled representatives from professional bodies, including the Law Society, ICAEW and CIOT, to update each other on their progress in relation to GDPR implementation. It is widely felt by the private client industry that when the legislation was drafted it was not designed with trust and estate practitioners in mind and there are some significant grey areas in practice.
Key issues that continue to be an industry concern discussed were:
- How the GDPR applies to lay trustees and personal representatives.
- How non-legal advisors process special category data.
- How the GDPR impacts upon international transfers.
- Queries in relation to joint data controllers and confidentiality.
- GDPR and its impact upon engagement letters.
- GDPR and its impact upon attorneys and deputies.
- Erasure of files and filing system requirements.
STEP’s working group is in the process of preparing a joint paper that it will submit to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) identifying the practical issues that have arisen for trust and estate practitioners. We hope that the ICO will be able to address some of the gaps in the guidance and legislation.
STEP has scheduled another roundtable in February 2019 to further discuss these issues and aims, to provide STEP members with a best practice position and guidance in due course. In the meantime, STEP has published an update to its briefing note on the GDPR, listed below.
Please note that STEP will be publishing a webinar in January 2019, recorded by the chair of STEP’s GDPR working group, Edward Hayes TEP of Burges Salmon, that will offer some interim guidance on the application of the GDPR to trust and estate practitioners.
- Briefing note: EU General Data Protection Regulation (Updated January 2019 – PDF, 64K)
- Briefing note:The GDPR – how private client lawyers can justify processing ‘special category data’ (PDF, 56K)
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