Brian Moree senior partner with Mckinney, Bancroft & Hughes, has said that the financial services sector needs to consolidate the jurisdiction’s regulatory bodies in to one umbrella organization and also called for the government to establish a ministry of financial services.

“We are going to have to address regulatory reform and I would hope that within five years we would have a single regulator within the financial services industry. We need to complete the consolidation.”

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The leading legal practitioner made the remarks in an address to delegates attending the Nassau Conference last week held at the Colonial Hilton Hotel.

“In my view, regulation of The Bahamas now is a disincentive and it needs to be reformed and become much more streamlined without compromising efficiency and without any diminution in regulation. I am simply proposing a reform in the regulatory structure.”

Moree was speaking on the topic of A Look Ahead: The Industry in Five Years during the final session of the one-day conference.

The lawyer expanded his vision of reform to include the creation of a ministry of financial services.

“We should work towards a complete relaunch of the financial services industry under a new flagship ministry, which recognizes the importance of the sector to the overall economy,” he said. “As long as financial services is grouped together with the other responsibilities of the Ministry of Finance, with no one person at the highest level of government being accountable for the sector and championing financial services with a single focus on the expansion and development of the industry, we will not get to where we need to be.”