Transforming the way we supervise

Throughout 2021, we will focus further on reviewing the way we supervise on a day-to-day basis.

In 2020, we laid the groundwork for restructuring our day-to-day supervisory work patterns, with the end goal of introducing more assured consistency in the standard of the engagement between our supervisors and regulated businesses, and better data showing the effectiveness of what we do.

The backbone of day-to-day supervision is a set of IT systems that hold records of our engagement with Industry, our own analysis of the data they provide us and our internal deliberations on how to approach issues that arise. These systems are key to our supervisory efficiency and effectiveness. They set the parameters of how we manage the work of our team of skilled supervisors to ensure consistency and quality of judgement in our supervisory work. They create a framework for the dozens of different supervisory processes, which make up the day-to-day work of a 21st century supervisor.

Having built improving our systems in some key areas in 2020, our intention in 2021 is to leverage that system capability and deploy the technology for each key supervisory process. This will mean that we can continuously improve our operational processes and through the use of technology increase efficiencies for
Industry and the JFSC.

In practice, what this means is going through each of our processes and procedures with the support of business analysts, looking for efficiencies and creating precise redesign instructions for IT developers to create a workflow management system, which decreases administrative tasks, speeds up
access to stored data, improves transparency to management and generates authoritative audit trails of decisions and responses. This will also allow for additional straight through processing, which will mean quicker decisions for more routine activities: a direct benefit for Industry.

We will be implementing this review, on a phased basis, resulting in a new operating approach. Alongside that, we will look at the structure of our Supervision division and makes changes consistent with those revised processes, which will build on the enhancements we introduced in 2016 and 2018.

A key component of our supervisory approach is examinations and this will continue to be a high priority for us in 2021. Our dedicated, specialist Financial Crime Examination Unit conducts financial crime examinations and provides support to Industry by sharing lessons learnt and technical support across the Supervision division. This year, the team will continue with a programme of examinations and will introduce a series of questionnaires for desk-based reviews of key components of the AML Handbooks. The Supervision Examination Unit and Pooled Supervision teams will undertake a series of thematic examinations on sectors and common issues identified by our risk model and the National Risk Assessment.

At the end of 2020, we completed a review of our authorisations processes. We will use the findings of this review in 2021 to improve how we licence businesses, with a view to developing our authorisations systems in 2022. These improvements will enable us to strike a balance between authorising businesses promptly, while giving assurance that we have challenged applications and made suitable judgements so that we protect Islanders from undesirable propositions.

Expanding the 'myJFSC' experience

Our vision is to implement a single online service for our regulated community that is easy to use and will drive more accurate and efficient data management, both for us and our stakeholders. This will replace three pre-existing portals, which are inefficient and outdated.

In 2020, we upgraded the way key and principal persons update and manage their personal information with the launch of myProfile; replacing the personal questionnaire portal. In 2021, we will expand the online services that we offer by focusing primarily on modifying how Industry submit data to us. This will mean we can de-commission legacy systems and streamline how we gather and process information.

These new services will allow regulated businesses to have, in one place, a greater range of information relating to their regulatory interactions and their management information for compliance. For the JFSC, these additional online services, which are integrated directly with our own internal systems, will allow us to continually monitor and assess the quality and consistency of our supervisory activity.

These improvements are the foundation of how we are going to engage with Industry. We already significantly increased the scale of our engagement in 2020 for both our regulatory and registry work, through the working groups we set up, the webinars we delivered, and the guidance and feedback papers we published. We expect this to continue and develop in new areas in the coming years. We will keep working with the user group of Industry representatives that we established to help us upgrade the myJFSC platform. Equally, the sub-groups that are focusing on specific areas including personal questionnaires and fees will be integral to the developments we make to our operations, as will our Registry User Group.

We will supplement this engagement with webinars, updates, bilateral problem-solving and a range of policy-focused engagements. The outcomes we achieve with this extensive work align with, and progress, our strategic roadmap.