By NATARIO McKENZIE
Tribune Business Reporter
nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net
A former Ministry of Finance legal adviser yesterday said public governance is vital to ensuring the right environment exists for financial institutions to thrive.
Rowena Bethel, now National Insurance Board (NIB) director, told a Bahamas Institute of Financial Services (BIFS) conference that the financial services could not simply sit and adapt on its own.
While addressing the topic of automatic exchange of tax information, Mrs Bethel, who has served as the Bahamas’ representative on the OECD’s Global Tax Forum, said countries stand to lose the most if their financial institutions are not prepared to adapt to the changing landscape.
“I believe that the jurisdictions and the public governance framework has a lot to do, too, in terms of ensuring that the right environment exists for financial institutions to adapt,” Mrs Bethe said.
“I do not believe that they can sit out there and do that on their own for two reasons. They may not be intimately involved in how these standards are evolving and what they are actually targeting and, secondly, it’s the jurisdiction that stands to lose the most at the end of the day because the jurisdiction affects every resident and citizen that works and lives there.”
Mrs Bethel added: “I believe that going forward there has to be a closer partnership between the public and private sectors, between products and services designed, so these take into account standards - and even developing and evolving standards.
“It’s very important to have that consistent and open dialogue so that there is an appreciation within the industry of the changes that are maybe on the horizon. It gives them sufficient time to make the adjustments. It also helps, I believe, to educate the public officers that must represent the industry in these various negotiations for peer reviews and evaluations.”
Mrs Bethel said the issue of automatic exchange of tax information is not developing in isolation. “This is so important because I often hear discussion around the OECD initiative and the FATF initiative, and some other initiatives, and they are all inter-related. It goes to show essentially that there is a very wide net that is being cast to deal with what is considered tax evasion,” she added.
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