The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamian financial services industry must “water the fertile ground” created by the Bahamas Financial Services Board’s (BFSB) recent European promotional trip, a leading QC yesterday urging the sector to “cement” improved relationships with the continent’s key intermediaries.

Brian Moree QC, senior partner at McKinney, Bancroft & Hughes, responding to comments by BFSB chief executive, Aliya Allen, that European intermediaries had expressed a desire to foster stronger relationships with Bahamian attorneys and service providers, said the Bahamas needed to “invest time and money” to exploit this potential opening.

Calling on all in the financial services industry to “do their fair share” in forging ties with these people - largely attorneys and accountants who direct where big blocks of high net worth client business go to be managed - Mr Moree added that the Bahamas had to be present in key markets more than once every three years.

Describing the feedback provided to the BFSB’s Bahamas Landfall promotional events in London and Switzerland as “good news”, Mr Moree told Tribune Business: “For all the professionals that are here in legal and trust companies that was encouraging.

“But we have a lot of work to do. What is very promising, coming out of Aliya’s statements, is that the ground appears to be fertile. We have now to water this ground.

“There’s a lot of work to be done, and all of us here engaged in financial services have to be prepared to invest in what now appears to be very fertile ground in developing these relationships, and cementing these alliances, with intermediaries in the major European centres.”

Acknowledging the role played by the BFSB, Mr Moree added: “The BFSB has done a good job in providing the foundation. It’s now up to the provider community in the Bahamas to this, and it’s going to involve investing time and money.

“All of us have to be prepared to do our fair share in developing closer relationships with intermediaries who appear to be interested in developing closer ties with local financial services providers.”

Ms Allen acknowledged in Tribune Business yesterday that the recent BFSB trip was the first time in three years that the Bahamas had been in Europe in a focused, concerted way. She conceded that this nation needed to have a more frequent, consistent presence and promotional visibility in key global financial services markets.

Mr Moree agreed, telling Tribune Business: “We are going to have to follow-up more frequently than every three years. We are going to have to follow-up with more meetings and delegations. That’s going to require more money and time, and we’re going to have to be prepared.”

Ms Allen, meanwhile, also told Tribune Business that the BFSB was planning further promotional tours for this year targeting the Brazilian and Asian markets.

She added that the organisation was “getting our ducks in a row now” for a Bahamas Landfall in Brazil in September, with Asia also on the agenda.

Ms Allen conceded that the BFSB and, by extension the whole of the Bahamian financial services industry, would like to visit Asia more often, and she expressed hope that support from the Ministry of Financial Services might allow this to happen.

“Our promotional efforts in Asia are in their infancy,” Ms Allen told Tribune Business. “We really started to push into Asia last year with Landfall.

“The problem with Asia, apart from the timezone and the language, is also distance. We’d love to be in Asia two-three time a year, but BFSB is only able to do Asia once.

“We’re hoping that now we have the Ministry of Financial Services, with its own marketing focus, we will be able to get some support on that side of it.”

A greater market presence, and forging closer ties with key intermediaries, is vital to the Bahamian financial services industry attracting more business in its specialist private wealth management niche.

It has long been seen as trailing international financial centre rivals, chiefly the likes of the Cayman Islands and Bermuda, in both these areas for too long.