THE primacy of the finance industry – and the focus on making sure that it stays competitive and profitable – must be at the front and centre of all Islanders’ thinking, especially on election day, senior ministers have said.
A Monday morning event at the Radisson to reveal the next stage of a programme to make finance more competitive was used as a launchpad to set a new, wider vision for Jersey – one that puts the sector in the forefront of the Island’s future prosperity.
The message was clear: without finance, we have nothing – and with it a concession that efforts to diversify the economy away from it had not borne enough fruit.
Ministers also accepted the recommendations of an independent panel led by an eminent British banker which was asked to review the Island’s main industry, which provides £6 of every £10 spent by the government.
Those recommendations went far further than simply a call to back the finance – extending to seismic changes to the Island’s cultural offering, its connectivity, the quality of its schools, and its housing and jobs policy.
Former NatWest chair and Bank of England grandee Sir Howard Davies was not backwards in coming forwards in setting out where Jersey needs to be.
Although commissioned to review the competitiveness programme, Sir Howard’s recommendations went much further.
They included reviewing Jersey’s educational offering – in light of competitor jurisdictions opening offshoots of famous public schools; its cultural offering, to stand up to places like Abu Dhabi which has its own Louvre museum; and its housing and jobs licensing policy, to make it more attractive for finance professionals to move here.
Sir Howard said that External Relations Minister Ian Gorst, who is leading the competitiveness ‘action plan’, might not welcome all of the recommendations and they “may leave him with an implementation problem” but Deputy Gorst later agreed that they were all common-sense proposals.
Although stressing that Jersey’s main industry had been successful for 60 years, Sir Howard also set out its relative decline: the Island slipping down global indices, banking shrinking as a sector, and newer jurisdictions growing at a faster fate.
As well as Deputy Gorst, Chief Minister Lyndon Farnham and Treasury Minister Elaine Millar spoke at the launch, all firmly pinning their colours to the finance mast.
Deputy Gorst said it was a “defining moment” for both the industry and the Island.
He said: “The evidence is all around us: our schools, our health service, our roads, quite frankly, our way of life is largely funded by the revenue generated by our financial services competitiveness programme. It is as much for the teacher, the nurse, the driver and the paramedic as it is for the industry.
“It is as much for the farmer, for the retailer, for the parent or the grandparent as it is for the CEO in a boardroom on the Esplanade.
“This, therefore, is not just another government action plan: it is a blueprint for maintaining and improving island life as we know it, and this way of working, pursuing the growth agenda, can and must become our business as usual.”
Referencing the election in June and encouraging all Islanders to vote, Deputy Millar said: “There will be candidates in the election who don’t really understand the industry, who don’t fully accept or understand its value to the Island, who may remain complacent about its future success, and who perhaps Just don’t even like it.
“We’ve all heard those comments: ‘Jersey was wonderful before financial services came along and ruined it all’. We know that is not true, but it really is important that you do think about this carefully.”
In terms of practical changes to the finance industry, the competitive action plan includes reviewing the financials regulations to make them simpler, and Jersey becoming a global leader in ‘tokenisation’, which is creating a digital, unique, and anonymous representation of an asset such as equities, bonds property or data.
