No one ever claimed regulator digitalisation is easy. Or quick. It has been about a year since Jersey Registry embarked on its digitalisation journey and things have moved forward considerably. Maybe not as smoothly as we all might have hoped, but fantastic progress nonetheless.
Over the past year, the Jersey Financial Services Commission (JFSC) has made great strides towards the digital future. MyRegistry online portal is up and running, with over 1,000 business already set up with their accounts, and the API submission services are fast approaching the ‘go live’ stage.
At TrustQuay we have continued the work to enable the API services for our core products. As part of that work we have worked closely with customers discussing the JFSC’s plans and our proposals, continually refining and validating as we went along.
Industry feedback
Overwhelmingly, the feedback in our discussions was positive – on two fronts:
Firstly, the customers felt we are developing the solutions which will add value for them. In the words of one of our customers:
“It is good to see that you are developing EXACTLY what we need.”
It’s this engagement with customers, and also the JFSC, that gives us the confidence in the solution we’ve built.
Secondly, the customers across the board agreed that enabling API functionality for regulatory submissions will significantly simplify the business processes, increase efficiency and save a significant amount of time to the entire industry, especially those who manage high volumes of entities registered in Jersey.
Extra time will help the industry prepare
Up until last week, the industry had a common concern which resonated with every customer we spoke to – the 30 June 2021 confirmation statement deadline – which was now only days and weeks away.
Our customers had already started preparing for 2021 submissions, mobilising time and resources to collate and update the data, checking for accuracy and making sure the Registry records were up to date.
As the JFSC has not yet launched the live API functionality as yet, our customers are updating data through myRegistry portal, which still requires manual updates for each entity, making it very time consuming and resource-intensive.
So, following feedback from their industry collaboration initiatives, last week the JFSC announced a further delay to the annual confirmation statement deadline, moving it back from 30 June 2021 to 30 September 2021.
The delay is good news for two reasons:
Firstly, it gives more time to regulated firms to update the data through myRegistry portal and by doing so alleviates concerns of late submissions and potential penalties.
And secondly, it creates more thinking space for firms to consider using our API filing module, which will significantly increase efficiency and reduce the demands on time and resources. Using API submission technology for the first time is far easier without a looming deadline.
Nearly there
At TrustQuay we are more or less ready to go live with our JFSC filing module. We are awaiting some final guidance from the JFSC on the go-live and, importantly, the final test scenarios. This will enable us to complete our final tests on the functionality and help our customers with onboarding.
So, we’ll be live in the coming days with our JFSC filing module. If you are thinking about ways to filing amendments and annual confirmation statements more efficient, please get in touch.
