Jersey Finance appoints 'home-grown' Deputy CEO

Wednesday 11 October 2017

For an industry which pays many of the island’s bills, the financial services industry in Jersey has always had its fair share of critics. In fact, some would say its had its unfair share, with a common barb being the erroneous allegation that it is full of people who weren’t born in the island.

Which is just one of the reasons why the recent appointment of Amy Bryant as Deputy CEO of Jersey Finance was an intriguing one. A Jersey girl, she has risen through the ranks in one of the island’s main financial services firms, before moving to the body responsible for looking after the industry’s future.

Express thought it was time to meet her:

Amy Bryant: "Well I am a Jersey girl through and through. I was a Le Maistre before I got married. I was born and educated in Jersey. Absolutely love living here. Really, really passionate about the Island. I went off to University, studied at Durham, did natural sciences and then I moved back. I didn’t see the ‘bright lights of London calling.’ I wanted to come back and I knew that there was a great opportunity to work within financial services in Jersey. I started my career at PriceWaterhouseCoopers. I initially started in their Audit Department. I did about three years there, qualifying as a chartered accountant. 

And then I wanted to move and try something different so I moved internally within PWC into their Tax Team and spent about another three years doing that and qualifying as a chartered tax advisor - and then the opportunity came up at Jersey Finance and it was just really, really exciting so I joined Jersey Finance as a strategic projects manager in 2011, and it was a real change in direction for me in terms of moving away from being client facing, fee earning etc. but just a wonderful variety of things that I get to do within my role, and that keeps it incredibly interesting."

Express: What does your role as Deputy CEO involve?

AB: "I have a relatively wide remit as DCEO. I head up our strategic projects function, which looks at putting together project activity to support the development of the finance industry. I also maintain my role as Chief Operating Officer, so I head up the internal running of the organisation as well.  In terms of the DCEO side, I will be this month appointed to the Board of Jersey Finance and I’m effectively Geoff’s ‘right hand woman’ I suppose going forward."

Pictured: Amy Bryant is a Jersey girl "through and through."

Express: How do you see Jersey Finance, and the finance industry itself, evolving over the next five years? 

AB: "Well, as ever, there’s lots of opportunity. There are also some risks ahead.  Brexit. The UK is our largest, and most significant, trading partner so something that will impact them, will quite naturally impact us - but from that perspective, we are a British Crown Dependency and our constitutional relationship with the UK won’t change, and we have negotiated independently of the relationship with the UK, bilateral treaties with the EU; so from that perspective, things are known for the finance industry. 

We are currently undertaking a strategic refresh, working in partnership with McKinsey and they are, as part of that work, looking at that specific area: identifying ways in which we can look for opportunity, particularly around diversification within our growth markets, and also digitisation.

So, there has been a lot of impact that technological change will have on financial services, and that is another work stream that they are going to be looking at."

Express: Will Brexit dominate the work of Jersey Finance as well?

AB: "I think there certainly will be a need for us to look at that, and to consider the impact that it will have on financial services, and the impact on Jersey as a result - and that’s why it’s great that we’ve commissioned this strategic review. Brexit is not the only thing that’s on the table in terms of the future. It’s going to be an influencing factor, but there’s lots of other things that we’re going to look at as well."

Express: Where are the real growth areas now?

AB: "The alternative funds sector is growing which is fantastic. I think if we look at our employment numbers within financial services, there are now over 13,000 employees in Jersey working in financial services, and over the past few years the mix within that number has changed, so the number who were predominantly in banking has reduced - but actually those working in other sectors has grown and has more than compensated for the reduced number in banking; funds has played an important part in that growth story.

Jersey has been assessed favourably by ESMA, from the perspective of obtaining a passport under AIFMD, which is another really positive endorsement."

Express: Where are the digital opportunities?

AB: "I think that the pace of change we have seen within technological advancement in financial services has exceeded what we expected, so digitisation and the impact it is likely to have was something that was considered when we worked with McKinsey in 2013 on the strategic review - but we’ve identified that now is the right time to re-visit that, because we are seeing things evolve and change all of the time. 

People have different views about the impact it will have, but one thing that is important is that the majority of our clients, as an international finance centre are overseas, they are cross-border. Therefore, if Jersey can position itself as the best jurisdiction to do business with remotely (i.e. utilising technology in our interactions with clients) that’s a fantastic selling point for the Island."

Express: Is there a real appetite to look at developing new technological processes and systems to ‘future-proof’ Jersey?

AB: "I think there really is. We spent some time last year, working in partnership with Digital Jersey, thinking about the natural opportunities for Jersey, and we identified three at that point 1) wealth tech; 2) reg tech; and 3) block chain, and we set up joint working groups. 

They were called ‘proposition development groups’ and we brought in interested members from within our community and Digital Jersey’s community to talk through what the opportunity might be, what the jurisdiction could do to take advantage of that, what individual brands could do.  So there is that real appetite to talk about it and implement things, so I think people are really keen to take advantage of new technology."

Express: What’s the five year goal for Jersey Finance?

AB: "I think our role is that we are a member driven organisation so we want to do the best that we can for our members, and we would love to have more members.  We feel that we have got a really really solid base within our membership. We have great coverage in the island, but as new entrants come to Jersey we would love them to become members of Jersey Finance, and to get real value from what it is that we do.  We have some great scores. We run a survey each year asking our members for feedback on our performance, and we have some really great scores coming through from that, and we just want to be able to continue to deliver a service that they value.

We have got some real, real talent within the organisation and it’s fantastic for me to be able to be a part of that. In terms of growth, I think we have had a period of growth within Jersey Finance over the last few years, and I think at the moment we’re the right size so I can’t see any significant change in the near time.

We’re very active in terms of looking at what is coming down the tracks in terms of international regulatory development, legislative development and that’s where our technical team do a really great job. They’re always horizon scanning, and thinking about what changes are coming, and what Jersey can do to adopt that or enact or respond to it in the best and most appropriate way. 

We know at the moment that the EU are going through their blacklisting process, identifying jurisdictions that they consider to be harmful and that they might put on a blacklist. That is probably something that would be front of mind for a lot of our members at the moment.

We’re always very happy to speak with anybody about what it is that Jersey does as an International Financial Centre. We understand and acknowledged that it can sound quite complex and there is language and terminology that can be difficult to understand but we’re very very keen to talk to people about it and explain it and really give islanders the ability to really feel proud about having such an IFC as Jersey is."

This interview also appears in the business magazine, Connect, here.