Well done to the Jersey Compliance Officer Association (JCOA) for a well organised event on Tuesday (26.01.2016) and well-done to John Harris for a well-polished and structured overview of where the JFSC are today and going forward…I made some notes and in summary I can report the following highlights

They, the JFSC are returning to the lead supervisor model as last tried around 2002, I think it was? When I was at the JFSC as senior manager I was responsible for Barclays and RBSI (to name but two firms) for my sins – a good model that David Carse got shot of, but here we are again and I look forward to see how it all works!!! Let’s hope the supervisory process can remain consistent and it does not become one rule for the big multi licenced firms and one for the small single licence firms (more on this a bit later).

In this change of supervision apparently there are Initiatives being undertaken to recruit staff – just like the old days when the old JFSC had a careers fair at the Grand. I even remember Mike Jones being the first graduate to go through the process and he is still there….and apparently management skills are now being encouraged and sought to the expense of technical skills. I hope the JFSC does not start looking like the NHS, no doctors but loads of expensive management, it won’t help the patients nor the JFSC budget.

On money matters, Apparently the JFSC budget is on a shoestring and they are bit poor – as well as having to invest in their infrastructure and process following 10 years of neglect (what organisation still takes cheques we were asked?).  My thoughts on this are they could start look at their own costs, for example look at the structure and salaries of the commissioners (10 in total) who Im sure are all well paid (non-exec chairman’s bounty of over £100k) and who are flown in (business class, maybe?) for board meetings and probably stay at a posh hotel (the premier inn would be perfect when built as its just around the corner), alternatively they could just stick up the fees and / or issue financial penalties (no prizes for the option to be taken)

We were also reminded that regulatory visit assessments is “an art not a science” and therefore there will always be inconsistency between one JFSC supervisor and another and therefore one firm to another – let’s just hope this does not mean that this bigger firms get away with more latitude than the smaller firms in how the JFSC visit teams apply “the principles”.  This makes me think that Groucho Marx was once a regulator as he said “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others”

Talking about inconsistencies we were all told that where a firm is found to be in breach of a regulatory principle and a public statement is issued what is disclosed will not always be the same (eg. style, format, minimum content).  We were told this is because of what is agreed between the miscreant and the JFSC behind closed doors – apparently the less you fight back, there will be less disclosure.  This sounds odd particularly for an organisation that stands on transparency and fairness (that’s the JFSC), with the behind the doors arrangements being made how can anyone have faith in fairness?  Also in analysing the public statements issued and considering some of the failures that have occurred it is still surprising what has / has not been disclosed, the bigger the company the less is said it seems..!!!

And finally after MoneyVal it will be prosecution for prosecutions sake!!!  let’s just hope the delineation between the JFSC, JFCU and the AG will be clear when making the decision to prosecute…..the last case that involved these parties saw the police as a witness stating they had not read the 28 boxes (or so!!) of evidence, they the police seemed to have trusted those that had collected it and opined on it (answers on a postcard) and the JFSC witnesses were clear it was all dodgy (buying passport allowing rich immigration, who would believe it!!!) ….no wonder it was a not guilty verdict?