Many people buy books, air tickets & other travel services and clothes over the internet. They make hotel reservations and reserve tickets for various shows and other events. Are trusts the next thing to go the low cost route with self service as the future?

Reading Le Temps newspaper recently your correspondent noted an advertisement on the front page of the business section suggesting that online trust creation is coming soon and directing interested parties to a web site. On this site you are treated to a video of Charles Poncet, a well known Geneva-based lawyer, talking about the possibility of low-cost online creation of a trust and inviting interested parties to send their e-mail address to be updated as the service is developed.

I was intrigued. Trust creation can be fairly simple but the consequences can be significant depending on your tax situation in your country of residence or nationality. Doing the wrong – or even the right - thing at the wrong time can prove to be very expensive. Mr Poncet said that this is a project in its infancy and the potential providers are seeking to test the market for levels of interest. He is not directly involved but has a consultancy role.

In terms of Know Your Customer, documents can be certified in the normal way, scanned and sent by e-mail. The set-up procedure is to be run by some customised software that guides people down a decision tree to create a trust deed. As for the legal jurisdiction “The most promising is Bermuda at this point, although we are looking at a few others.”

The idea is to generate volume business in an automated process that allows for a low cost offering. As for compliance – the proposal is to make a “substantial effort” in the area of compliance. As to who is behind the idea, Mr Poncet is not to be drawn, merely noting that there is a main investor, a trust company, a software company and a law firm – not the firm of which he is a partner – involved.

So is DIY the future of financial planning? Daniel Martineau of Close Summit Trust Company and a funding member of the Swiss Association of Trust Companies, on whose behalf he responded to my contact, seems under-whelmed by the concept. “You have been able to incorporate a company online for some time.” he says. “This service may be an extrapolation of that. For that matter you can also buy a draft will at the stationers. Can this be done? Yes. Is it advisable to take this level of planning into your own hands? No. It is dangerous.”

He continues further, “Trusts are meant to hold all of, or a large part of a family's wealth. Isn't it worth getting some professional advice about your life's accumulated wealth? This reminds me of the standardised "stationers wills" that one can buy in the bookstore. A wise lawyer I knew 25 years ago once quipped to me: ‘the problem is not that they are not legal, the problem is that they are legal!’”

Mr Martineau believes that there are a lot of misconceptions about trusts in the market place and that it “takes a conversation” to clarify both what a client wants and what a trust can and cannot achieve. Mr Martineau is also “intrigued by some of the catch lines in the video that "everyone" can benefit from a trust and that there are taxes advantages in "most" jurisdictions. The reality is that in recent times the use of trusts has become relatively less attractive as tax regulations have tightened up their legitimate use.”

Other trust industry experts to whom WealthBriefing spoke expressed similar reservations, especially about using an online service to create a trust into which you are going to gift substantial assets. Time will tell if the response is deemed sufficient for the service to be established – and the consequences if it is.