The JFSC’s policy adviser and fintech lead answers our questions ahead of Jersey TechWeek.
What is your job title and where do you currently work?
Policy adviser and fintech lead at the JFSC.
Can you give a very brief overview of what you are doing at TechWeek?
TechWeek is a great initiative to bring like-minded people together. I will be available between 12pm-1pm every day during the week for informal chats with individuals and businesses about the regulatory regime. I am also delivering a short update on the regulators’ perspective of fintech.
What’s new and exciting in your field for 2020?
It is fair to say that 2020 has been a turbulent year. That said, it has been exciting to watch businesses adapt and navigate their regulatory requirements in a forward-thinking and entirely remote way.
Are you aware of any significant development or innovation in the pipeline that you believe will be important in your sector?
Supervision technology is being developed all the time and regulators are becoming increasingly complex and technology driven. Regulators around the world need to develop new, dynamic, risk-focused supervisory approaches, to support these changing business models. We are doing just that at the JFSC and have taken strong steps forward in how we use technology. We are also developing new functionality, such as improved data analytics and registry supervision. We also moved our “on-site” examinations online due to Covid restrictions and will continue to roll these out for the remainder of the year.
We recently announced our commitment to support the financial services industry with the development of a shared “know your customer” (KYC) utility, if that was something industry wanted to explore further.
How do you think the Channel Islands can become a player in the field of fintech?
Jersey has a well-established and well regulated financial services industry. By leveraging this success, and utilising the technology that is available or being developed, I believe Jersey can go from strength to strength. Regulated firms are becoming more and more innovative, creating a seamless experience for their global customers, This will and should only continue.
At the JFSC we are also working with API on our new Digital Registry. This is an exciting development for us which is planned to be rolled out by the end of the year.
How can your industry innovate to help people living during the pandemic?
We have launched an intensive capital investment programme to invest in the future of the organisation. Our hope is to be known as a digitally enabled, technologically advanced and dynamic regulator.
Making our Registry fully digital is one of the ways we are doing this. We are giving our customers greater access and more flexibility to manage their own information, all of which will be available online.
See here for more information about this year’s Jersey TechWeek schedule.
