A new Finance Concierge role and pilot programme will only be partly funded the States.
Finance Executive Peter Deacon has been appointed to the newly created post, which is intended to act as a single point of contact for businesses looking to navigate Guernsey’s government, regulator and promotional agencies.
Express asked the States a series of questions, including who would pay Mr Deacon’s salary, how success would be measured, and what evidence suggested businesses needed a single point of contact to establish themselves in Guernsey.
A spokesperson for Economic Development (ED) said Guernsey Financial Services Commission (GFSC) will fund the majority of the 12-month pilot programme, with ED picking up the rest of the tab from its existing budget.
The programme would be a collaboration between ED, the GFSC and Guernsey Finance, they said, with all three setting and measuring goals.
“Oversight and reporting arrangements” would be agreed by all three bodies, and the “effectiveness will be assessed against those agreed measures at the end of the pilot period”, the spokesperson added.
‘Concierge element’
Alice Joy, the GFSC’s Director of External Affairs, said: “Supporting the growth and development of Guernsey’s finance sector has long been an objective for the Commission.
“We were therefore pleased to see the Finance Sector Strategy for Growth identify the creation of a concierge service as one of its recommendations, as it reflected ambitions we had already been exploring through our own work.”
Mrs Joy said the role built on an earlier “concierge element” during an ‘Innovation Sandbox’ programme it ran last year, which was “designed to help innovative businesses navigate the regulatory process and access the support they needed”.
“We felt that bringing together regulatory, governmental and industry expertise into a single point of contact would provide the best support for businesses considering establishing or expanding operations in the Bailiwick.”
