By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas must “release our chokehold on the status quo” if it is to successfully break into new financial services products and markets, the deputy prime minister has urged.

K Peter Turnquest, addressing members of the Bahamas Association of Compliance Officers (BACO), said the private sector and the government needed to work together “to break those barriers down” if this nation is to realise its ambitions in areas such as Fintech (financial technology”.

Pointing to initiatives such as the Central Bank’s Project Sand Dollar, which aims to create a digital version of the Bahamian dollar, and the Securities Commission’s Digital Assets and Registered Exchanges Bill 2019 (the DARE Bill), Mr Turnquest said legislation to facilitate the latter will likely be released for public consultation before year-end 2019 or early in the New Year.

“But this requires us to release our chokehold on the status quo and to venture into new markets,” Mr Turnquest said. “This is not to negate the existence of barriers, but collectively we have to break those barriers down. Industry cannot look to government alone to do this work.”

Arguing that access to digital services and technology was critical to the competitiveness of small businesses, the deputy prime minister reiterated the need to balance compliance and regulation with innovation.

“We must strike the right balance in this area so that your work as compliance officers helps to safeguard the integrity of the industry, while also facilitating the growth and expansion of industry. This is the balance we must all strive to achieve,” Mr Turnquest said.

“We need you compliance officers to help us by being more aggressive in our stance towards reducing the internal red tape in your organisations as well as legislative amendments that may be required to lessen the burden of the restrictive requirements to open and maintain an account at commercial banks - and even the international sector of our financial services industry.

“We are currently uncompetitive in this area and the status quo cannot remain if we are to remain at the forefront of the industry and, at the same time, encourage financial inclusion and access to financial services required for development.”

Mr Turnquest said Hurricane Dorian had further exposed the need for more technology-based financial solutions, arguing that this was “no longer a wish or luxury; it is now a necessity” after the sector was completely shut down on Abaco.

He added that The Bahamas faces several further reviews by international agencies in early 2020, including the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development’s (OECD) assessments of this nation’s economic substance/physical presence regime and country-by-country reporting.