The T&T Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion (TTSEC) is host to the 9th Tech­ni­cal As­sis­tance Pro­gramme for fi­nan­cial sec­tor reg­u­la­tors in the Caribbean, be­ing fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the Unit­ed States Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion (US SEC).

In a re­lease the TTSEC re­marked that this year, as a re­sult of COVID-19, the pro­gramme is be­ing con­duct­ed via a vir­tu­al plat­form on an eight-day pe­ri­od Oc­to­ber 19 - No­vem­ber 16, 2020. The days will not run con­sec­u­tive­ly.

Ac­cord­ing to the lo­cal reg­u­la­tor, the TTSEC – US SEC col­lab­o­ra­tion on train­ing and de­vel­op­ment dates back to 2006, when spe­cialised train­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties were of­fered for reg­u­la­tors with­in the fi­nan­cial ser­vices in­dus­try in the Caribbean.

At the open­ing of the pro­gramme, Lystra Lu­cil­lio, Act­ing Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the TTSEC said the COVID- 19 pan­dem­ic has im­pact­ed on, and con­tin­ues to, shape the way in which we in­ter­act and con­duct busi­ness.

Lu­cil­lio con­tend­ed that tran­si­tion­ing from phys­i­cal and di­rect con­tact to vir­tu­al and con­tact­less de­liv­ery of ser­vices - this vir­tu­al train­ing has now ex­pand­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty for learn­ing to many more par­tic­i­pants lo­cal­ly as well as re­gion­al­ly.

She said: “We are pleased to be a part of en­gen­der­ing growth and de­vel­op­ment, across our fi­nan­cial sec­tors.”

For the cur­rent pro­gramme, there are par­tic­i­pants from the Caribbean Group of Se­cu­ri­ties Reg­u­la­tors (CGSR) to which the TTSEC is a mem­ber, in­clud­ing the Bar­ba­dos Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices Com­mis­sion, Bermu­da Mon­e­tary Au­thor­i­ty, BVI Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices Com­mis­sion, East­ern Caribbean Se­cu­ri­ties Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­mis­sion and at the lo­cal stake­hold­er lev­el, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s - Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Branch and the Fraud Squad.

In his re­marks, Kester Guy, Chair­man of CGSR and Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices Com­mis­sion, ac­knowl­edged the rel­e­vance of the ar­eas of fo­cus to the grow­ing de­mands across var­i­ous land­scapes.

He in­di­cat­ed that “the ben­e­fits to be de­rived will yield ex­po­nen­tial re­turns, not just for our in­di­vid­ual ju­ris­dic­tion, but for the re­gion as a whole.”

Ac­cord­ing to Guy, al­though the cir­cum­stances of this year may have phys­i­cal­ly sep­a­rat­ed par­tic­i­pants, tech­nol­o­gy en­ables them to gath­er vir­tu­al­ly, thus al­low­ing con­tin­ued ac­cess to the ex­per­tise and tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance that would em­pow­er re­gion­al reg­u­la­tors and or­ga­ni­za­tions to con­front, head on, the many is­sues they face.

At the end of the first day Kurt Gre­senz, Se­nior As­sis­tant Di­rec­tor in the US SEC’s Of­fice of In­ter­na­tion­al Af­fairs not­ed, “We are pleased to be part of this pro­gram host­ed by the TTSEC, as we have a long his­to­ry of co­op­er­a­tion with au­thor­i­ties across the Caribbean and around the world.”

Gre­senz ex­pressed that as the par­tic­i­pants in the pro­gramme dis­cuss their ex­pe­ri­ences and best prac­tices, they can learn from one oth­er on how best to ad­dress any chal­lenges and fur­ther their shared in­vestor pro­tec­tion goals.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTSEC, the Tech­ni­cal As­sis­tance Pro­gramme would ex­pose par­tic­i­pants to train­ing on a range of top­ics with bear­ing on the fi­nan­cial ser­vices in­dus­try such as: Com­pli­ance In­spec­tions and Ex­am­i­na­tions; De­vel­op­ing a Cor­po­ra­tion Fi­nance Func­tion; Over­sight of FIN­RA and Build­ing an Ef­fec­tive Self- Reg­u­la­to­ry Pro­gramme; Fin­Tech, Dig­i­tal As­sets and Ini­tial Coin Of­fer­ings and Fi­nanc­ing Small and Medi­um Sized-En­ter­pris­es.

The lo­cal reg­u­la­tor said that the pro­gramme would place fo­cus on chal­lenges cur­rent­ly fac­ing reg­u­la­tors in T&T and re­gion­al­ly and cov­er best prac­tices with­in cap­i­tal mar­kets, to max­i­mize both in­vestor pro­tec­tion and mar­ket de­vel­op­ment.