CIFSA’s response to UK’s Offshore Report
The Cayman Islands Financial Services Association (CIFSA) has responded to a recent report by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the United Kingdom’s House of Commons. It has sought corrections regarding a “misrepresentation†of the standards of regulation within the UK’s Overseas Territories that was mentionedf in a statement of the report.
According to the PAC report, the financial regulation standards in most of the Territories were not as good as the standards that exist in the UK Crown Dependencies such as Jersey and the Isle of Man.
To respond to the statements, Eduardo Silva, Chairman of CIFSA, compared the 2 groups of UK Territories.
He said that, in general, CIFSA welcomes discussing offshore centres as it improves the level of information on the important role of such offshore jurisdictions as the Cayman Islands. However, he commented that on occasions like this it is equally important to correct any misrepresentations, “particularly those may impact international perceptions of the standards of regulation in the Cayman Islands”.
Chairman of CIFSA indicated that Jersey officially recognises anti-money laundering (AML) practices of the Cayman Islands as equivalent to its own, which means that the Jersey Financial Services Commission’s (JFSC) AML/CFT requirements are satisfied if a customer has met customer identification procedures in Cayman. The JFSC has said that Jersey’s financial institutions can rely on the “know-your customer†and “due diligence†procedures of the institutions in the Cayman Islands as being as robust as the laws that must be observed in Jersey.
Chairman of CIFSA also stated that, according to the most recent CFATF report, the Cayman Islands financial services industry has a strong anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing compliance culture.