From left: Eckler’s Principals for Pensions and Benefits, Ryan Griffith and Tricia Chamely; Royal Fidelity’s Vice President, Jillian Nunes; CEO of the Financial Services Commission, Kester Guy; and Sagicor’s Investment Analyst, Nicholas Neckles, have a chat after the first session of the conference.
Laws being overhauled
IN a bid to make them more relevant, several pieces of legislation governing the Financial Services Commission (FSC) are being overhauled.
“We have commenced looking at all aspects of our legislation – all consequential and specified enactments starting with the FSC Act and each of the broad areas we have responsibility for,” stated Chief Executive Officer of the FSC, Kester Guy.
He was speaking at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Conference Centre yesterday at the “Investment Policy Review for Pension Plans” conference hosted by leading provider of actuarial and pension consultancy services, Eckler.
Highlighting the need to strengthen laws controlling financial services, he also insisted they be kept up-to-date with international changes.
“We hope to ensure that the legislative requirements of those sectors are at least on par and look at some of the recommendations of the requirements of the legislation. To make a determination as to whether or not we are still relevant to do this, your engagement would be necessary in helping us to be able to navigate new requirements and particularly as it relates to the appropriateness of its application to Barbados to ensure that we can chart a proper and sustainable direction as we go forward,” he told the hundreds of persons gathered.
In an interview with The Barbados Advocate moments after, the FSC boss went further into detail as to which laws are being looked at.
“We are also talking about issues with the Occupational Pensions Act, Insurance Act, the Securities Act and Co-operatives Societies Act as these are the four broad areas which fall under the FSC’s remit,” he said.
“There may be aspects within our enactments which have been written many years ago that for one reason or another are not fully relevant to today’s activities, so in reviewing those we will be looking at areas where there may be obstacles to the ease of doing business with a view to ensure that we have appropriate legislation that can facilitate the smooth functioning and effective operations of all our regulated sectors,” Guy stressed. (JMB)