This Client Guide will give a brief summary of what our clients should aim to expect from a firm such as ours. It will also outline general policies of our firm, such as the billing procedures as well as communications. Please feel free to contact us.

Communicating with your Professional Adviser
Our office hours are normally from 08.00am – 16.00pm Monday to Friday. However, if these hours are inconvenient for you, we are perfectly willing to meet you outside of these hours by arrangement. Meetings can be held in the conference room at our office, or at another location to better suit your convenience.

Confidentiality
Those who work at Trust & Fiduciary Service Limited take their responsibility very seriously and will never discuss your affair with any other person or organisation outside the firm without your express permission. We understand that clients need to know that they can trust a firm before asking it to give them advice. We also understand that this trust comes in three essential elements: 1) Clients should trust a firm to do its work within the time period agreed upon, 2) Clients should trust it to do their work to a high standard of quality and excellence, and 3) Most importantly, clients should trust the firm to respect the confidentiality of the information it is given, and to never discuss this information with other parties without your consent.

Quality of service
As one of the pioneering practitioners in the offshore Seychelles, we strive to maintain the highest standards of practice through a process of selectively recruiting the best people for the job, careful supervision, and rigorous training. Our professional advisers are dedicated to providing the best quality service to our clients. We strive to meet and exceed customer expectations by working together to provide information and services that are personalized to the client’s needs. With our highly-skilled professionals and high speed connections to international electronic data base systems, our professional advisers have easy access to all the information they need to handle your problems. All of our operations are supported by our up-to-date office technology, maintained by our highly computerized IT staff members. It is because of this that we can provide you with first class service, all at a reasonable price.

Basis of Our Charges
We understand that our clients need to budget legal costs. Our goal here at Trust & Fiduciary Services Limited is to help our clients better comprehend where their money is going to, and we are happy to discuss the basis of our charges and billing procedures. Our bills are prepared primarily on the basis of the time spent on your work, unless there is another arrangement agreed upon by both parties before the commencement of our working on the matter. The professional staff members and other fee earners have different hourly rates. This rate is dependant on experience and are reviewed at the end of every year.

Disbursements
Disbursements fees are the expenses which we pay or incur on your behalf and are separated from our professional fees. We will bill you for these expenses or ask in advance for funds to cover the disbursements, such as court filing fees, bonds, stamp duty, statutory fees, search fees and airfares. Our bill will provide an itemized breakdown of all disbursements charged to your account.

Fee Estimates
We are always happy to give clients an overall estimate of the entire fee, including disbursements. This estimate will have to be based on information which the client gives us and our assessment of the work load involved. This is not supposed to be a binding quotation, however we will strive to notify the client of any changes in the fees, and review procedures with them.

hen fixed quote cannot be accurately predicted, you may wish to place a budget on your work. We will work diligently on your dossier up to when the budget is reached, in which case, we will contact you and review your dossier with you. You may wish to make a decision on the status of your work at that time.

If you have concerns about the budget, fees or disbursements, or need have a special requirement, please inform us ahead of time. Communications allows us to better work on your dossier and assist you, knowing what your special needs are.

Billing Procedures
Billing arrangements may vary within different departments. Arrangements will be dictated by your requirements for a certain case. Most of the files will be billed at a monthly interval, however, some departments bill on a less frequent basis. A final bill may be delivered to you at the completion of your work. If there is any balance remaining in your account, we will naturally refund it to you.

Our bills are due for payment when you receive them, and it is expected that we receive payment within 30 days. If payment is not received within 30 days, we reserve the right to charge interest at the rate of the United States Dollar prime lending rate of the Bank of America on the outstanding amount. However, if you are experiencing genuine difficulty in paying our bills, please discuss the matter with the professional adviser on your case, and we will endeavour to assist you with the matter.

How to Pay Us Less
Trust & Fiduciary Services Limited strive to make certain that you get value for your money. One way of doing that is to help you make our charges as low as possible. Some helpful hints are:

• Make sure you inform us of what you want us to accomplish. That way we both understand each other,
  and we can avoid miscommunication
• Give us all the facts that you have. Progress can be hindered when trying to find information
• If you are engaging our services on behalf of a company or an organisation, please allow us to be working with
  the ability and authority to make decisions. It will save both of us a lot of time
• Insist that your supervisors act promptly to meet deadlines
• If you need to talk to a professional advisor do this in the most efficient way possible
• If you need to discuss many things, it would be best to ask for a meeting where we can both use this effectively
  However, if it’s not an important matter, or if there are not many matter to discuss, a phone call or e-mail will suffice
• Keep the meeting as brief as possible, to ensure that you are not charged for unnecessary matters
• Prepare for these meetings, and come in with your comments ready, so that no time is wasted. We can better
  help you if you are clear and concise with your issues. Please ensure that you have all the necessary documents
  at hand, so that it is not necessary to reschedule another meeting
• If you require advice of a preliminary nature, it would be most cost effective to do so in a meeting. Also, if you
  believe that many questions will rise when asking for this advice, a meeting would be the most convenient
  way to address all your questions

Commercial and Contract
With an In-house team of Notaries and Lawyers, Trust & Fiduciary Services Limited provide legal services in terms of negotiating and drawing up contracts as well as providing legal opinions for various firms involved in commercial contracts.

Further legal and financial services in the field of project studies memorandii can be obtained on request. Projects are generally those made available to foreign investors in tourism, fisheries and telecommunications etc and which are subject to favourable terms and conditions including those made available in the international trading zone area.

Our previous clients have been involved in hotel projects, fisheries project etc.
Trust & Fiduciary Services Limited local expertise guarantees professional services to facilitate commercial investments and projects.

Arbitration
Trust & Fiduciary Services Limited offers arbitration services as an alternative to litigation. Arbitration rules and procedures follow international standards and are applied by Seychelles domestic Legislation.