The International Monetary Fund has recently published the final draft of a report it has written on the effectiveness of Jersey’s regulatory regime.
Its findings will now be considered by the Jersey Financial Services Commission and the States – who will respond to it and then probably publish it on the same day that Guernsey and the Isle of Man release their own reports.The review, which included a two-week visit to Jersey by an IMF team last September, is part of a global assessment of offshore finance centres initiated by the G7 group of the world’s largest economies.
Following the collapse of the Asian economy in the late 90s, the G7 set up the Financial Stability Forum (FSF) to consider the effect of offshore jurisdictions on global financial stability.
44 offshore centres are being assessed against a number of international standards set by recognised bodies such as the Financial Action Task Force, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision.Jersey received a boost early on in the assessment process when the FSF worked out which centres needed urgent attention and would be reviewed first by the IMF.
They identified Jersey as a ‘jurisdiction generally viewed as co-operative with a high quality of supervision’ and the Island’s assessment, therefore, was one of the last.
