DUBAI: Jersey Finance, the island’s financial centre which acts as custodian of £1.2 trillion ($1.88 trillion), is in talks with a dozen banks from China, India and the Gulf about obtaining a licence in Jersey, its deputy chief executive said.
Situated between France and Britain in the Channel, Jersey is a British Crown dependency outside of the United Kingdom and the European Union.
It is jostling with larger offshore markets such as Switzerland, the world’s leading offshore private banking centre, to manage part of the growing liquidity in Asian and Middle East banks.
Presently, 18 percent of the £138.9bn in banking deposits in Jersey are from residents of the Middle East and Asia, according to Jersey Finance’s latest quarterly report for the period ended June 30. But only three of the 34 licensed banks in the island are from those regions, according to the same report.
That figure is likely to rise in the coming years as cash-rich banks from those regions build up their international muscle, while some European banks pull back from foreign markets because of capital and regulatory constraints, Richard Corrigan said.
“What we’re now seeing are big regional banks that have developed strong Tier 1 capital that don’t necessarily have the international network to support their ranking so they’re starting to back-fill their international network in recognition that having a offshore presence of some substance is an increasingly important way of deepening their service to clients,” he said. Reuters
