Jersey Finance plans to increase banking business through its growing overseas presence

Jersey Finance is stepping up its campaign to attract more banking business to the Island.

Speaking at the quarterly briefing for Jersey Finance members, Geoff Cook, chief executive at Jersey Finance Limited, said that banking remained an enormous part of the Industry and was hugely important in contributing tax to the Jersey economy.

He told the audience that while the level of bank deposits had held up well during the worst of the global financial crisis, growth was flat and there was a need to seek ways of attracting additional deposits, particularly from new markets.

He highlighted the success of the marketing campaign in the Gulf region which had intensified since 2007 culminating in the opening of an office in Abu Dhabi in 2010 and growing business links with the region as a whole. In that same period bank deposits attracted to Jersey from the Gulf had nearly doubled from £11 billion to £21 billion.

He commented:

‘It shows that if Jersey increases its presence in a region and we get our voice heard and if our Industry members are active in the location, we can increase our share of banking business.’

He added that to succeed it was crucial that Government, the regulator and Industry worked together.

He highlighted the huge level of regulation from the EU and elsewhere which had to be tackled in consultation with Government and the regulator and the importance of the growth markets in China, India, Brazil and Russia which were forecast to overtake the more mature, Western and American economies in the decades to come.

As part of the strategy to increase its presence in the emerging markets, Jersey Finance has plans to open an office in Sao Paulo, once they have evaluated it further following visits to the region and subject to the financial support of the Government. 

‘Our strategy is to keep evolving our offering, to keep it strong, fresh and competitive, to find new sources of business in new markets and geographies and to try and generate new business from new products or from the evolution of existing services.’