Wynter

WHEN BRIAN Wynter assumes the post of governor at the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) on December 1, he will have to hit the ground running.

By then, the Government should know if the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has approved its request for a US$1.2 billion loan. Either way, Wynter has his work cut out for him going into another tough economic year.

Wynter has been a senior executive at the Caribbean Regional Technical Assistance Centre (CARTAC) in Barbados since late 2007. CARTAC operates as a project of the United Nations Development Programme, with the International Monetary Fund serving as the executing agency.

Wynter's rotation there was to have lasted three years. He would just have been completing two years with the centre.

Prior to that job, he was executive director of the Financial Services Commission (FSC), the regulatory body he helped start in 2001.

It will be Wynter's second stint with the BOJ. He was deputy director when he left the central bank in 2000.

The bespectacled Wynter made his mark at the FSC, which was formed in the wake of the so-called financial meltdown that took place in Jamaica during the 1990s.

During his stint there, Wynter kept an eagle eye on the regulation of securities, insurance and private pensions. When he resigned from the FSC in September 2007, the kudos came from all angles.

One of his admirers was Jamaica Securities Dealers' Association president, Anya Schnoor, who said Wynter had "done a lot for the development of the industry".

Wynter was probably the most vocal critic of the alternative investment schemes, like Cash Plus and Olint, which emerged in Jamaica in the last six years. In March 2006, the FSC issued a cease-and-desist order against Olint which it said had conducted securities or investment advice without being licensed to do so by the FSC.

Just before leaving for Barbados, Wynter issued a final warning to would-be savers in alternative schemes.

"These are very, very dangerous," he said.

Those words proved prophetic, as both schemes collapsed controversially.

Brian Wynter is one of three children for former Gleaner editor and Jamaica Labour Party Senator Hector Wynter, and his first wife, who is from St Vincent and the Grenadines. He was raised in France and England where he studied economics, which served him well on his return to Jamaica in 1988.

He is senior adviser in capital markets at CARTAC, an organisation that offers training in economics and financial management to its members.