From January 2020, we monitored the spread of Covid-19. We formed a dedicated crisis management team to track outbreak developments closely and implement the guidance issued by both Jersey and UK Governments. Our priority from the start was to keep our people, Industry stakeholders and our Registry customers safe, while continuing with our operations and staying ‘open’ for business.
Having comprehensively reviewed and amplified our business continuity plans - and asked Industry to do the same - we moved to full remote working on 23 March, one week ahead of the Government of Jersey enforcing home working. We secured enough equipment for staff to access systems and opened up new communication avenues for team collaboration, which allowed us to stay connected over the coming year. We reviewed, adapted and implemented new working practices so we could continue working as normal, while supporting colleague wellbeing.
As the regulator
As the prospect of the first lockdown loomed, we proactively engaged with the regulated community around their business continuity arrangements. With more than 800 financial services firms looking to us for guidance on how to steer their businesses and employees through the pandemic, we moved fast.
From the outset, we engaged with the Government, Jersey Finance and local trade bodies to understand their concerns, and issued guidance. We swiftly supported Government with the Business Disruption Scheme and issued prompt communications to Industry. We also took responsibility for administering the Essential Worker Scheme for the Island’s financial services industry.
Throughout the pandemic, we continued to deliver on our regulatory remit. Mindful of the disruption and extreme pressures on businesses transitioning to remote working, we immediately offered Industry a level of flexibility with deadlines for their business continuity plans, and regulatory and financial submissions. We also issued guidance on customer identification, Board resilience and compliance monitoring.
We were one of very few regulators globally to continue our examinations programme, moving to a virtual process within four weeks of lockdown. This enabled us to continue delivering a key component of our supervisory approach. By the end of year, we had conducted 58 examinations on more than 100 businesses.
Over the course of the year, we assisted Government with understanding the impact of the pandemic on lending in Jersey, conducting a review on the banking sector’s health in Jersey in terms of liquidity and capital. During the pandemic, we also supported the establishment of Jersey’s first loan guarantee scheme. After rollout in Jersey, it was then adopted in Guernsey, the Isle of Man and Gibraltar.
As the Registry
A key priority for us was to maintain service levels for our significant and diverse Registry customer base.
Recognising the huge pressures on local companies, we endeavoured to help by waiving late payment fees, extending deadlines and bringing forward a reduction in our annual confirmation fee, which was due in 2022.
The volumes that our small Registry team processed for the first month of lockdown were staggering, given the upheaval of moving to remote working. Between March and April alone, they dealt with more than 25,000 updates to our central registers and a significant number of paper annual returns. We received feedback from
Registry users, the Government and Industry about the team’s resilience to provide continued unbroken service during an extraordinary time.
That resilience was unwavering throughout the year as the team kept meticulously balancing dayto-day operations with the delivery of the JFSC’s largest capital expenditure project to date – a fully digital Registry by the end of 2020. This involved migrating our multiple registers to a new system and moving customers and all their data onto myRegistry, our new customer account platform. Not only was this operationally and technically an extremely demanding programme of work, but the team also had to ensure Registry customers came on the journey. This meant executing an extensive engagement and outreach programme of emails, webinars, digital updates, user group meetings and online training - all while working from home.
Deadlines for the programme were pushed into 2021 to help businesses prepare and to accommodate Government’s change to the effective date for the new Registry Law. While the team undertook final preparation work on the new systems at the end of 2020, they dealt with an 80% increase in service requests and volumes – unprecedented levels which continued into early 2021.
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