Jersey’s finance industry is a huge part of its identity and reputation worldwide.
Though a small island, it houses many financial service firms that come in all shapes, sizes and specialisations.
Asset servicing business Ocorian is one of them.
With offices spanning the continents and a presence in more than 20 locations, its operations and reach cannot be overstated.
Global CEO Chantal Free is at the helm. She was in Jersey recently to visit Ocorian’s headquarters.
“Jersey is absolutely central to us – in every sense. It’s where we were founded more than 50 years ago, and it’s still our base today,” she said.
“I love coming here because I get very energised meeting colleagues and
hearing about the really cool stuff we do here.”
Chantal joined Ocorian just under two years ago. Her career spans financial services and regulated industries and businesses where the “proposition to the client is a combination of advice, technology and administration”.
It’s her job to drive the growth of the business.
“Ocorian is ten times bigger than we were just eight years ago, when we had offices in six locations with 300 colleagues,” she shared. “Now, we’re in 20 locations with around 1,800 colleagues.”
She highlighted that with that growth, Ocorian’s offering had significantly changed.
“It’s my responsibility to take that forward and continue making sure that we turn into a global, premier asset servicing business,” she added.
Chantal said that for 2025, the team were focused on designing products, solutions and propositions their clients needed.
Almost unbelievably, we have already reached the second quarter of the year – and Ocorian has been busy.
“We have just expanded our bond trustee services to the UK and have been able to grow in the US to provide fund administration services to our global clients,” Chantal shared.
The firm is also investing in technology and artificial intelligence for the benefit of its clients.
Chantal said this would help the team provide a service that was “better, smarter, faster and better value”.
“Our clients want everything we provide to be seamless,” she added. “They want doing business with us to be easy.”
And though thoroughly client-focused, Ocorian also prioritises its people.
“No matter what technology or automation you put in, at the end of the day we are a people business,” Chantal said.
A global career framework and line-manager training are some of the ways Ocorian is supporting its colleagues’ careers.
“I believe that our colleagues should grow as our business grows,” she shared. “We would like people to think of Ocorian as the place to go to develop a global and exciting career.”
Jersey was a central part of Ocorian’s “heritage”, as Chantal described. The business was established in the Island over 50 years ago and remains its “base” today. Not only does she consider Jersey to be “pivotal” to Ocorian, but also to the wider financial services sector.
She highlighted that Jersey is seen as having unique characteristics that make it a safe, reliable jurisdiction from both regulatory and political stability perspectives.
This is reaffirmed by the Island’s recent positive MONEYVAL assessment.
“It has a long tradition of being a solid, stable jurisdiction, and that’s why we and our clients like Jersey,” she said.
“I think it’s a centre with a lot of expertise, because of its long history,” Chantal added. “It is one of those jurisdictions where we can truly solve really complex client problems.”
I believe that our colleagues should grow as our business grows. We would like people to think of Ocorian as the place to go to develop a global and exciting career
Jersey’s standing on the global stage was also important. Chantal said Jersey was a rarity, in that it combined “regulatory rigour” with a “real ease of doing business”.
“At the moment, we’re onboarding 180 new entities in the real-estate space. I’d love us to scale that capability globally, but it actually resides here in Jersey.”
She added that Ocorian’s employee benefits trust business, including more than 20% of the FTSE 100, and private client business, specifically the most complex family offices, are managed from Jersey.
“We remain very committed in Jersey,” said Chantal. “For players like us, the importance and heritage of Jersey is second to none.”
Jersey’s offering has only been spotlighted more amid recent global uncertainty and market volatility.
Chantal described the current environment as “interesting”, and stated that during moments like this, institutions and private clients looked to places like Jersey.
“They look for stability, a ‘safe haven’. Investors pivot towards jurisdictions where they know they can rely on the regulatory, compliance and political infrastructure,” she said.
“Jersey has positioned itself as a stable jurisdiction with long-standing expertise and experience in managing global assets.”
She added that Ocorian colleagues were supporting clients through this period of uncertainty and discussing de-risking strategies.
“In times like this, Jersey’s role is really important,” said Chantal.
Considering said uncertainty, Chantal observed that what the rest of 2025 would look like was “everyone’s guess”.
She predicted that once the current situation stabilised, the finance industry would continue to “transform”.
Underpinning that transformation were data and technology – key focus areas for Ocorian.
“Automation and technology are big parts of that transformation, but also the data, insights and analytics that come from them,” shared Chantal.
“Bringing together disparate data, making sense of it and having predictability that is attached to data and insights is something that we need to continue focusing on as an industry.”
Chantal was especially enthusiastic about the finance industry becoming “compliant by design”.
“Our world is becoming very, very complex,” she said. “The way we, our processes, and technology work needs to be compliant from end to end.”
And the current state of global affairs has only demonstrated the importance of risk management.
“In an uncertain world, our clients want us to really understand their purpose, vision and strategic objectives, and advise them on how they can de-risk their operations,” Chantal explained.
ESG and sustainability were the words on everyone’s lips, especially in finance, but Chantal said she was “disappointed” with the pushback these movements were having in a wider context, as she saw them as “absolutely critical”.
“We and our children will live in a world where, unless we do something about climate change, the impact is not going to be very pleasant,” she argued.
It was for this reason that Chantal was glad the finance industry had embraced ESG and sustainability, and why Ocorian would continue prioritising them.
“A lot of our clients take ESG really seriously and a very significant percentage invest in renewables,” she said. “We are very proud of that.”
“I do hope that it retains its strong emphasis in the global agenda.”
Chantal emphasised her point that people were central to Ocorian’s operations, and said that though the business was taking advantage of AI and technology, there would always be a “need for brains that can solve really complex problems”.
“As an industry, continuing to attract the best talent, training and keeping them there is an absolute priority.
“We’re constantly looking for people who want to join our industry and organisation,” she said. “Anyone who wants to be part of a large, growing, global business and is interested in financial services should knock on our door.”
Listen to the full podcast with Chantal below, by clicking here or searching Bailiwick Podcasts.
