Guide to Essential Money Tools

Property Tools

Money tool - IHT property planning service

Rothschild Channel Islands

From our offshore base in Guernsey, Rothschild’s Channel Islands operation provides a comprehensive range of banking services for private clients and professional intermediaries.

Our wide range of services is focused on the preservation of wealth, the management of risk and a detailed understanding of each client’s needs. To open an account, you need to make a minimum initial deposit of £100,000 (or currency equivalent).

Your dedicated account officer will discuss our private client services, which includes call, fixed, structured, dual currency and fiduciary deposit accounts.

Also available are Visa debit and charge cards, sterling chequebooks, foreign exchange, 24-hour access to Internet banking through ArrowOnline, international payments, standing orders and direct debits. Once you become a client you also have access to our execution only securities dealing and custody service with valuations of your portfolio available through ArrowOnline.

Bespoke competitively priced credit facilities are available which cater for your needs as a private individual as well any trust or corporate structures. Loans, guarantees, standby letters of credit and a wide range of equity, fixed interest and mutual funds are accepted as security along with cash, commercial and residential property.  Investment and trust services are provided through sister companies, starting from £500,000, involving strategic asset allocation advice to arrive at an optimal investment portfolio.

An interesting example of our recent bespoke product development relates to the explosion in the past ten years of non-Spanish nationals buying property in Spain. Far too many expatriates find out the hard way that inheritance tax (IHT) does not work the same way in Spain as it does in their home country.

This affects all property owners in Spain, not just residents; the extreme IHT is 81.60%. The answer is to minimise the amount of assets that are exposed to this. Although funds may be available to purchase a property outright, a mortgage is a very effective way of reducing the total value of your Spanish estate exposed to IHT.

Our CreditSelect Series 4 product, enables the Spanish home to be purchased or refinanced using a mortgage, with the proceeds of the mortgage being used to buy a bespoke capital guaranteed investment that is held outside of Spain, therefore not forming part of the Spanish estate.

Although this idea has been around for several years now, our Rothschild product, available for properties valued in excess of Euro 250,000, also provides the potential for a regular income to be drawn from the profits made on the investments, as well as a capital release sum up-front.