How Jersey Can Compete in the Financial Sector
The Financial Services Competitiveness Programme was launched in July 2025, aiming to strengthen Jersey’s position as a leading International Finance Centre (IFC). It recognises that competitiveness cannot be seen as static in a shifting global landscape.There are four key strategic areas outlined in the programme:
- International tax strategy
- Business & regulatory environment
- External growth strategy
- Future competitiveness & regulation
Collaboration and engagement
The programme actively encourages collaboration between key stakeholders across the industry, government and regulators. The Jersey Financial Services Commission (JFSC) has highlighted the importance of its role in enabling resilience, competitiveness and innovation.
Industry views
In a recent roundtable held by KYC360 in Jersey, senior leaders identified a number of opportunities and challenges to increase the competitiveness of Jersey for local service providers.- Strong support for engaging external consultants to help the government build a coherent strategy
- Calls to rewrite regulatory frameworks like the AML handbook and COBO, which were seen as overly complex
- A push for stronger coordination between service providers with comparisons drawn to Luxembourg's more unified approach
- Demands for greater transparency of key performance metrics such as fund flows and product launches
- Challenges around duplication and manual rekeying when sharing data between firms
- Views that the JFSC model has shifted from supervisory to enforcement-led, which has deterred innovation
Technology as a driver
Technology is cited as a “force multiplier” in the programme and it will be a key driver for competitiveness through efficiency gains. This means a policy environment that is supportive of RegTech adoption that can automate and streamline compliance processes such as CDD, KYC and KYB. The JFSC’s innovation hub provides regulatory guidance around adoption.
KYC360’s Networked KYC tool is an example of how innovation can support collaboration and competitiveness as it allows firms to efficiently and securely share KYC data. This means customers can be onboarded in days rather than months. Privacy is built by design, with only relevant fields exchanged and automated refresh means that when one party updates data, all parties have access to the updated auditable data.
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The KYC360 platform is an end-to-end solution offering slicker business processes with a streamlined, automated approach to Know Your Customer (KYC) compliance. This enables our customers to outperform commercially through operational efficiency gains whilst delivering improved customer experience and KYC data quality.
