With the COVID-19 pandemic causing disruption to the global economy, companies are facing the prospect that they may become unable to meet their contractual obligations. During these unprecedented times, Intertrust can support new transactions or step into existing/restructured transactions as "Data Trustee", ensuring GDPR requirements are met and non-public personal information is held independently and securely, providing comfort to all deal parties.

In securitisation transactions, the personal data of borrowers or lessees is typically held by the originator or servicer. In the case of a notification event, the data is released to the SPV or the security trustee. This process requires actions from the party holding the personal data, but if the originator or servicer defaults and consequently fails to release the personal data, it could become necessary to rely on a third party.

Often securitisation transactions will have a mechanism in place allowing the delivery of personal data to independent third parties. Personal data may be held by an escrow agent, which can either be a civil-law notary or a data trustee, in line with an escrow agreement between the escrow agent, SPV and the originator or the servicer. Alternatively, growing in popularity to comply with GDPR, it is also possible for the originator or servicer to deliver personal data in encrypted form to the SPV and deposit a corresponding decryption key with a data trustee in accordance with a data trust agreement.

As an independent, non-conflicted provider of a wide range of capital markets services, we act as data trustee in many of our clients' transactions, including public and private securitisations by international automotive companies and mortgage lenders. In providing our data trustee services, we offer our clients a robust operational process with strict segregation of access, secured IT environment and procedures tailored to the specific needs of the transaction.

Please do get in touch to find out more about our data trustee services.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.