CIMA Managing Director urges finance sector to go even further
At a recent finance industry conference, the Managing Director of the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA), Cindy Scotland, told that the current instability in the financial markets of the world serves as the perfect opportunity for self-examination and improvement of financial services offering in the Cayman Islands.
Scotland presented a keynote speech to the 6th annual Campbells Cayman Fund Focus Conference, the theme of which was “Stress Testing Cayman Fundsâ€.
She observed that it is time for the Cayman Islands’ fund industry to do some introspection taking into consideration the internal and external pressures the industry faces (for example, the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, the credit crisis, and high profile fund collapses).
Scotland said that Cayman remains the leading centre for fund registrations, as at December 31, 2007, however she emphasized that there are always areas to be enhanced. According to her, “The Cayman funds industry – in fact the entire financial industry as it is now so highly interrelated – must seriously examine itself to identify what it can do from within to strengthen itself against shocks such as are currently being experiences worldwide”. She noted that, in particular, the funds industry has a great opportunity to demonstrate leadership as regards self-regulation. So, it is time for the industry to exercise the capacity for innovation in order to develop and adopt the best worked-out standards that would be relevant particularly to this jurisdiction.
Regarding the regulatory issues, he suggested that Cayman remains up to international scrutiny. She also reminded that the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF) assessed the jurisdiction as having good compliance, meeting 38 of the 40+9 anti-money laundering recommendations, which is above the average of 26 for FATF member countries.