FSC improving digital interface with businesses

The Financial Services Commission (FSC) is making major changes to its operations in an effort to help improve the doing business climate in Barbados.

The regulator is in the process of rolling out a new digital platform, which will, among other things, allow for digital payments and a reduction in the time for decisions to be made.

With the new platform, the FSC should also be in a better position to produce data if needed.

Chief Executive Officer of the FSC Kester Guy told Barbados TODAY the digital platform shift was in line with government’s intention of digitizing the government sector and making things easier.

“We also are doing some work in that regard to ensure that our interface with stakeholders is more seamless and more accessible.

“In the early part of next year we will be reaching out to our stakeholders and introducing them to our digital platform from which they will be able to do all their exchanges with us, whether it be applying for new licence to even submitting their quarterly or annual regulatory filings to us,” said Guy.

“We are moving significantly away from this analog form to a more digital form that will help us to provide the sector with the type of turnaround and information that is key,” he said.

He pointed out that some changes have already been made to how the international insurance companies applications are processed, and the results have exceeded expectations.

“We have heard of several complaints about the length of time things have taken at the FSC to be approved,” said Guy.

“For instance one time we took an average of 12 weeks to process an application form for one of the international insurance companies and that is outside of our own standards which we established to be about four weeks,” he pointed out.

However, he said since the introduction of a new application process in May this year the FSC has seen an improvement going from 12 week to three weeks.

Guy also pointed out that in the securities division there was an annual renewal process that took up to 15 weeks, and that process has now been eliminated.

“This was unique to the securities division. Firms had to reapply every year for us to make an assessment of them. We are now bringing our operations and efficiencies into seamless operation such that the securities entities will no longer have to reapply for their license. So come January 1, 2020, once we issue that indefinite licence to them we would regulate them as we do the other entities,” he said.

Other entities are assessed on an ongoing basis.

The FSC is the regular of the non-bank financial services sector including insurance, credit unions, securities, and pensions.

However, he said new “material change guidelines” would be issued, which would require all entities to notify the regulator of material changes within specific timelines either before or after those changes are made.

“The whole intention is to gain efficiencies where we can leverage technology to ensure that we are a robust and a world-class regulator,” he said.
marlonmadden@barbadostoday.bb