Guernsey
Fiduciary
Power List

Guernsey's financial services sector holds £57 billion in UK assets and contributes nearly 40% of the island's GDP. Since 1998 there has been a 294 per cent increase in global fiduciary media mentions, with 7% sustained annual growth from 2015 onwards.

The 2008–2010 GFC marked a 37 per cent increase in coverage from the preceding three years. A second spike arrived during the pandemic, driven by ESG requirements and the emergence of fintech and AI in fiduciary services.

In 1980, Jersey held over 85% of global fiduciary media mentions. By 2023 that had fallen to around 40% as the Cayman Islands rose from near zero to over 30%.

Guernsey has consistently held the smallest share, peaking at nearly one-in-ten mentions in 2012 and 2017. The gap represents a significant opportunity for targeted thought leadership and media strategy.

Ogier tops the ranking with 135 articles, a third more than Mourant in second. The Guernsey Press alone provides 29% of total coverage. The bottom half of the table is tightly packed: firms 9–20 each achieved under 32 articles over the five-year period.

National outlets combined account for just 2 per cent of coverage. Firms drove mentions through opinion pieces, surveys, recruitment stories, community initiatives, and roundtables.

Facebook remains the largest platform by UK user count — nearly 44 million — despite a slight decline from 2022. LinkedIn has grown consistently from 25 million in 2019 to 34 million in 2023, fuelled by remote-work adoption and talent market shifts.

Instagram has seen the steepest growth trajectory, rising 39% from 23 million to 32 million users. X/Twitter has grown modestly and plateaued at 17.5 million. Despite Facebook's numerical dominance, fiduciary firms overwhelmingly chose LinkedIn as their primary channel.

Across the top 20 firms, combined following is 491,733. LinkedIn accounts for 85%, its monopoly is striking despite Facebook having more UK users overall. X/Twitter follows at 8%; Facebook at 5%.

54 per cent of companies had no corporate Facebook account at all. LinkedIn's dominance among 25–34 year-olds makes it the platform for targeting the next generation of fiduciary decision-makers.

Oak Group leads the social rankings with 9,513 followers, posting around four times a week across platforms. It is the only firm to have built a truly multi-platform presence, with followers on LinkedIn, Facebook, X/Twitter, and Instagram.

HSBC CI & IoM stands out as an outlier: ranked third overall but with a very different platform mix; its following is dominated by Facebook (4,900), while its LinkedIn presence is minimal compared to peers.

LinkedIn's 25–34 age cohort accounts for 47.5 per cent of its entire UK user base — the strongest domination of a single age demographic for any of the four platforms. This demographic maps almost exactly onto early-to-mid career fiduciary professionals, making LinkedIn the natural home for talent-facing communications.

Facebook's 55+ cohort is far larger (22%) than any other platform's equivalent age group. X/Twitter's skew toward 25–34 year olds (48%) aligns it with young professionals, but its UK user base is a fraction of LinkedIn's in absolute terms.

Over a third (35%) of all searches for fiduciary services originate from the United States. For trust company searches, the US dominates further, accounting for more than half (54%) of all online activity.

India ranks fourth globally across fiduciary search terms, ahead of Australia and Canada, a signal of significant untapped demand in a high-growth market.

HSBC Channel Islands & Isle of Man tops domain authority with a score of 83 out of 100, with Northern Trust second at 75. Both benefit from exceptionally strong parent-brand backlinking. Excluding these two, the average DR for remaining firms falls to just over 42.

There is a strong correlation between domain rating and social media following: 77% of firms above the average DR also rank highly on social. Active social presence drives online visibility; quality media coverage drives domain authority.