About Us - STEP Benelux

Benelux

STEP is the global professional association for practitioners who specialise in family inheritance and succession planning. STEP works to improve public understanding of the issues families face in this area and promotes education and high professional standards among its members.

STEP was founded in 1991 and STEP Benelux branch was formed as an A.s.b.l. (a Luxembourg not-for-profit entity) on 7 November 2012 with 51 founding members of 11 different nationalities. The branch had been informally in existence since 1997 following an approach to Graham Wilson, our first chairman, by Michael Woolf, who was at the time tasked by STEP Worldwide to promote STEP in the civil law jurisdictions.

Today STEP Benelux is an active branch of 121 members with a committee representing the three countries, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, which make up the Benelux, one of Europe’s most important post-war conventions and a precursor to the EU. This makes our branch very interactive and allows us not only to address the law and practice in these three jurisdictions but also to work every day on international issues.

We hold five or six seminars a year on topics ranging from European to local law financial issues in the private client and private equity world. Speakers range from innovative industry leaders to European Union deciders. Luxembourg’s financial centre offers a diverse range of financial services so our talks are often focused towards the local market.

The highlight in our calendar is our annual two-day conference where we welcome around 150 people from the Benelux region and far beyond. The event is truly international with a melting pot of nationalities and languages. The Prime Minister of Luxembourg honoured us at our inaugural conference as our keynote speaker. In 2018 we were delighted to host a very successful STEP Europe conference.

With a constant desire to strengthen our technical committee more or to develop our activity by launching local specialised interest groups (SIGs) we would be happy to have among our members any professional willing to share our values and challenges. It would also be wonderful for STEP Benelux to respond to consultations or to opine on behalf of members.

Please do contact us if you would like to get involved in any of our jurisdictions.

Simon Gorbutt, Chairman