Eduardo Silva CIFSA Chairman

The Cayman Islands Financial Services Association (CIFSA) says it stands ready to demonstrate to the world that the Cayman Islands is in compliance with international regulations and standards.
In response to the UK review of Britain’s Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies announced on 24 November, the CIFSA said Cayman remains stronger than most financial centres worldwide in both areas.

“This is hardly the first such review that Cayman has gone through and each time the conclusions reached are the same – that Cayman is a very professional and well regulated jurisdiction that adheres to international standards as well or better than the most respected financial centres,” CIFSA Director Jeremy Smith said.

“As long as this review is conducted in good faith, without a politically pre-determined outcome, we are extremely confident that this review will reach similar conclusions.”

An independent report recently published by the US Government Accounting Office (GAO) supports this position, CIFSA said. As do other important, and independent, rankings and measurements of financial centres such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI), CIFSA added.

In terms of transparency and cooperativeness the US GAO report said: “US officials from multiple agencies said that the Cayman Islands government has been cooperative in responding to U.S. requests and shared useful information at their initiative related to questionable financial activities that involve U.S. connections.”

Rankings from the FATF show that the Cayman Islands significantly outperform jurisdictions like the US, Canada, Australia, Singapore, and Switzerland in adherence to internationally agreed anti-money laundering standards. Yet these facts rarely get much coverage.

“The Cayman Islands is constantly being asked to prove itself in terms of professionalism and ethics in ways that other financial centres are not, and many of those other jurisdictions could not stand up to the kind of scrutiny we routinely deal with here,” said CIFSA Chairman Eduardo Silva.

“We are far from the secretive enclave that some try to label us. We have always encouraged foreign press and legislators to visit us and experience what Cayman is all about. And without fail they come away impressed and with a completely different perspective on our industry.”

The Cayman Islands financial industry, CIFSA says, plays an important role in the world’s finances, providing services and products that help residents on-shore in ways that many are not even aware of.

The current financial crisis has its roots firmly on-shore, but the Cayman Islands will prove a valuable ally in the fight to solve this crisis, CIFSA added.