By Lavern Clarke, Staff ReporterTHE Financial Services Commission (FSC) is in need of specialist staff but has insufficient resources to pay for them, leaving the regulatory body to grapple with other creative means of attracting experts on a public sector salary.
FSC executive director, Brian Wynter, said he had no immediate answer to the challenge, but is lobbying private sector bosses, appealing it seems to their nationalistic side, to consider lending some of their staff to the infant Commission.
Wynter told corporate heads at the Hilton Kingston last Wednesday that he now has a staff complement of 65-67 but "need many more", including attorneys, accountants and finance experts.
The FSC, which regulates the financial sector, including the insurance industry, was also given the recent responsibility of overseeing the island's pension funds.
"This is in your interest," he told an AmCham breakfast, to have a "high quality" regulator.
"Good regulation is not cheap, but good regulation is cheaper than bad regulation, or no regulation at all," said the executive director.
However, senior partner at PriceWaterhouseCoopers and AmCham executive, Richard Downer, pointed to the possible conflict of interest in cases where a company seconds staff to the FSC, because of a likely split in loyalties. Wynter, acknowledging the point, said the problem could be mitigated by making the secondments project-specific.
He also made a pitch for persons to consider employment with the regulator as a sort of contribution to public service, to offset their salary - but even Wynter, whose pitch was half-heartedly made, did not sound optimistic about filling his vacancies via this route.
Created by statute in 2001, Wynter said the FSC had a "significant degree" of autonomy, but was not yet at the point of financial independence to allow the watchdog agency to be self-sufficient, and by extension to fully exploit that autonomy.
The regulator is now working on a fee structure which is underpinned, Wynter said, by two key principles - that it recovers its cost, and that the cost of regulation is applied to the parties that caused the cost to be created.
"This can get very scientific and very detailed," said Wynter, referring to the implementation of the fee structure. The Commission already earns from licensing fees applied to investment advisors, securities traders, and insurance companies and agents. The fees, as posted on the agency's web site, 'fscjamaica.org', ranges from $4,000 to near $300,000 (US$5,000).
It also remains on Government's budget, having been allocated $20 million for this fiscal year a 49 per cent drop from the year prior with $18.5 million of the current funds slated for compensation of employees, and the rest to finance subsistence and travel expenses.
FSC executive salaries range from $2.3 million to $4 million, plus 25 per cent gratuity, according to its 2001 annual report.
