Report calls for Jersey finance sector improvement

10 hours ago

Ian Gorst has short dark hair, is wearing glasses, and a blue jacket with a white shirt and light coloured.

Jersey's financial sector should be reformed to make it more competitive, a new report has said.

The government's Time To Win report lays out the results of the Competitiveness Programme, which was an attempt to find ways to grow the island's financial and related professional services (FRPS) sector.

It proposes "five imperatives" to inspire growth and to combat increasing competition from other country's financial sectors.

Deputy Ian Gorst, Minister for External Relations and Financial Services, said it was a "once-in-a-generation opportunity for government, industry and regulator to work together".

'Call to action'

The report said: "Jersey's financial and related professional services sector is the bedrock of the Island's economy.

"It is responsible for more than half of Jersey's economic output, provides two in five jobs and generates £6 in every £10 of tax revenue.

"That is the equivalent to funding the entire health and education budgets, and most of social security.

"The success of this industry has funded public services that would otherwise have been impossible without higher rates of tax."

But the report said that, without reform, there would be "a continued erosion of market share" due to increasing competition from sectors in Asia and the Middle East.

The five elements of the strategy include: renewing the island's "appetite for growth", protecting the brand of Jersey as "a simple, stable and certain tax regime", making improvements to the island's International Finance Centre, cutting regulation costs and complexity, and "embracing digitisation".

The strategy, the report said, represented "a call to action rather than a statement of intent".

It added: "The recommendations call for a change in delivery and a focus on outcomes that can be measured, tested and felt by those who choose to do business in Jersey.

"The opportunity is real and the prize is substantial, but it will only be secured through sustained commitment, investment, institutional confidence and the determination to operate as a competitive jurisdiction focused on growth and with an intent to win."

The government's most senior civil servant, Dr Andrew McLaughlin, has also been reported as saying Jersey needs to "double down on our intent to grow this sector and make it clear to the world".