Information for regulated businesses (Coronavirus COVID-19)

We recognise and understand that regulated businesses are facing unprecedented challenges due to the outbreak of the Coronavirus (Covid-19).

With your staff transitioning to home working, we are mindful of the disruption you are currently experiencing and the potential challenges you may have in meeting regulatory deadlines.

We also appreciate that processes and procedures may need to be adapted to support revised working practices. This will include considering alternative arrangements if you experience Board and staff shortages to ensure you can continue to meet operational and regulatory requirements.

To hopefully alleviate some of these concerns, and to offer you a level of flexibility, we are extending some of our forthcoming deadlines. However, we would encourage you to submit your information to us before the revised deadlines, where possible. If you can’t meet the deadlines, we ask that you engage with your supervisor in a timely manner.

In addition to the following information, we are actively reviewing other upcoming deadlines and emerging approaches to regulatory requirements. We will provide you with further updates and additional guidance in due course.

As ever, we encourage you to deal with us in an open and co-operative manner, engaging with your supervisor at an early stage about any risks and issues that arise.

Audited financial submissions

We are conscious that you and your auditors may not be able to meet the usual deadlines for audited financial statements, and therefore we are giving a three-month extension for submissions due between 31 March and 31 July 2020.

To be eligible for this extension, you will need to notify our Regulatory Maintenance team within ten working days of your original deadline.

Unaudited financial submissions

We may ask you to provide us with your unaudited financial submissions before the revised deadline so it’s important that these are prepared as near as possible to the usual submission deadline.

With your auditors, we encourage you to complete audits and submit your audited financial submissions to us before the revised deadlines.

Other regulatory submissions

We have also revised some of the deadlines for other regulatory submissions due between 31 March and 31 July 2020 and agreed the following extensions:

ANLA, capital and solvency requirements

To meet your regulatory obligations, you are required to maintain adequate financial resources at all times, as specified in each Code of Practice.

We understand that the current economic environment may place pressure on the financial resources of some businesses. It’s therefore important that you actively monitor capital, financial resource and solvency requirements.

You need to consider:

• making sure that your finance functions are regularly monitoring forecast budgets against actual performance
• increasing the frequency of Adjusted Net Liquid Asset (ANLA) and Margin of Solvency calculations to maintain specified thresholds.
• updating and formally documenting that your directors (or partners, certificate holders or other senior managers) are satisfied that your organisation can maintain adequate resources in order to meet business commitments.

Outsourcing

We are aware that many regulated businesses will have already undertaken a detailed review of their outsourcing arrangements as part of their business continuity planning.

If you have not carried out your own review, you will need to do this as a priority.

It is particularly important that you assess your contingency plans and make alternative arrangements if the outsourced party can no longer continue to fulfil the activities.

Cyber and Financial Crime

Unfortunately, during such times of economic and social stress, criminal activity does not diminish.

We urge you to notify us of any attempted or successful cyber-attack or fraudulent activity and remind you of your obligations for suspicious activity reporting under the Money Laundering (Jersey) Order 2008 and the relevant AML/CFT Handbooks.

Notifications

We remind you to pay particular attention to Principle 6 of the Codes of Practice (Principle 5 of the Money Services Business Code of Practice) and ensure you keep making all required notifications.

In the current circumstances, notifications are important as we use this information to identify thematic risks and emerging trends across industry.

The scope of Principle 6 extends to unregulated activities undertaken by regulated businesses and their corporate groups.

You should always provide us with notifications in writing, however, if you cannot meet the deadline specified by a Code of Practice, you will need to notify your supervisor by telephone and follow up in writing as soon as possible.

Examination programme

We are postponing our onsite examination programme for an initial period of four weeks. 

If you are currently engaged in our examination process, we will contact you directly about next steps.

Our examination units are currently working through a revised process, which we will share with you in due course.

We remind you that you are responsible for continuing to meet regulatory obligations and high ethical standards, while managing your business resilience risks during this time. Despite our onsite examination programme being temporarily postponed, we will take necessary steps if we become aware of any serious issues requiring action.

If you have any queries, please contact your supervisor.