The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

THE private sector was yesterday urged to take the lead in “raising the profile” of the Bahamas by better promoting its financial services products.

“I think that’s the approach we have to take internationally now, and demonstrate on a technical level why the Bahamas is a better place to be,” said Ryan Pinder, minister of financial services, yesterday.

Addressing a forum on arbitration and investment at UBS (Bahamas), he said: “We as a jurisdiction have done a very good job at creating products. I always talk about us being nimble and creating products in response to the changing environment and the demands of our clientèle.

“The problem we have is when we do that, we do it in response to our clientele and we don’t go out and, from a technical point of view, show how these products are so effective and show how these products can be very instructive and constructive to practitioners and lawyers alike abroad.

“I sat with a client in London who utilises the Bahamas, but said that they couldn’t sit across from the client and say: ‘Let’s use the Bahamas and do x, y and z’, because I don’t understand the technical intricacies of your products and I don’t have the time to go out and do all the research myself.”

Mr Pinder added: “We want to do promotional trips where we promote the Bahamas, but you also have to get down to the nuts and bolts as well.

“We will go back to Brazil with the IOSCO ‘A’ determination and show how the structures work, and why now the Bahamas is a better jurisdiction than any other.

“We have to be very technical in our presentations as well. I should not be the one, as the policymaker of the Government, promoting the technical aspects of what we offer and why we are better. I encourage the private sector to accompany me, where you have the private sector practitioners and the policymakers together, and even the regulators, where we show a unified front and the technical discussion is done by the private sector. After all, it’s them who are looking for clients.”