The Jersey Financial Services Commission (JFSC) has received top ratings for its trust company regulation following the first evaluation of its kind by the Group of International Finance Centre Supervisors (GIFCS).
Jersey was the first international finance centre to be assessed under the GIFCS Standard for Regulation of Trust and Company Service Providers. The JFSC was awarded the top two ratings for the 10 areas assessed:
• licensing
• corporate governance
• controllers of trust or company service provider (TCSPs)
• key persons and other employees
• control over vehicles
• conduct
• prudential
• administration
• financial crime and international sanction
• cooperation
Given its stringent assessment criteria, the evaluation made a number of recommendations to improve the JFSC’s existing practices.
JFSC Director General Martin Moloney said: "We have already made most of the minor regulatory enhancements following our evaluation and these have been recognised by the assessors in their report.
"Other jurisdictions are now able to use the GIFCS standards and our evaluation to make changes to their regimes ahead of their assessments. This can only lead to higher standards of international regulation among other finance centres and we are committed to working with other jurisdictions to achieve this.”
John Aspden, Chairman of the GIFCS, said: “Having issued the standard, the GIFCS was keen to commence peer group evaluations of members’ compliance and acknowledges Jersey’s willingness to take this important step in starting the evaluations process.
"It shows how the standard can provide the framework for a credible supervisory regime and in relation to a business sector which clearly benefits from demonstrating compliance with principles of good behaviour and administration.”
There are a further 18 GIFCS members, and those that undertake TCSP activity will undergo the same assessment over a period of time. A representative from the JFSC will be an assessor for one of the next evaluations taking place in 2019.
The GIFCS First Round Mutual Evaluation Report is available to view here
About the GIFCS
Established in 1980, the GIFCS is a group of financial services supervisors, focused on promoting the adoption of international regulatory standards, especially in the banking, fiduciary and AML/CFT arena. Its membership accounts for a market share of almost 10% of global international banking assets.
The group, which meets formally twice a year, has become a positive contributor to promoting compliance among its membership with the Basel Core Principles and the FATF Recommendations on AML/CFT. It also contributes to some of the work of IOSCO.
The GIFCS is a recognised authority on the regulation of trust and company service providers, the interface of these intermediaries with AML/CFT standards, and on the principle of identifying beneficial owners behind trust and company structures. It has issued an international standard for regulation of this sector, which is being implemented by members and against which their compliance is being formally evaluated.
The GIFCS’s Standard for Regulation of Trust and Company Service Providers has developed into a full regime embracing a multilateral memorandum of understanding, peer group assessments of members’ compliance against the standard and supervisors’ meetings.