CIMA Chief Explains Cayman Islands' Recipe For Success

by Amanda Banks, Tax-News.com, London

19 June 2007

Chairman of the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA), Timothy Ridley, has identified a "combination of fundamental core factors" that have been responsible for Cayman's development into one of the world's largest international financial services centres.

Speaking in Montego Bay, Jamaica, at the Caribbean Investment Forum organised by Euromoney Conferences, Mr Ridley briefed some 400 delegates from the Caribbean, USA, Latin America and elsewhere. He was part of a panel discussing successful offshore financial centres in the Caribbean.

Mr. Ridley suggested that Cayman's success was due to "providing the infrastructure, services and operational freedom and flexibility for international investors and businesses on a foundation of stable, certain, intelligent and balanced political, economic, social, legal and regulatory regimes."

He highlighted the industry's growth, noting that it had gone hand in hand with policy and legislative developments and international cooperation. He noted the role of Cayman's private sector, and the institutional framework that the country had built up.

The CIMA Chairman also covered some of the challenges that the jurisdiction faced in the continued development of the industry, and how it was dealing with them. These included: pressure from the leading economic powers to curtail the activities of offshore financial centres; initiatives of international standard setters; immigration and human resource issues given the worldwide shortage of skilled labour in the field; and building up resilience to natural and man-made shocks.

Other members of the panel were representatives from the British Virgin Islands Financial Services Commission and the Bahamas Financial Services Board.

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