The Financial Services Commission (FSC) is taking what chairman Oliver Jordan is calling “decisive action” to increase the speed, efficiency and transparency of its regulatory approvals.
The move comes as Jordan shared a warning from Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley that Barbados’ status as the third-largest captive insurance jurisdiction in the Caribbean, and seventh globally, could be challenged by growing competition from Aberta, Canada.
Speaking at last week’s 2025 Barbados Risk and Insurance Management (BRIM) Conference, held under the theme Unlocking Barbados’ Competitive Edge In Captive Insurance,
the FSC chairman said: “We are at a critical juncture. The global risk landscape is evolving rapidly, driven by climate change, technological disruption, and geopolitical uncertainty. For Barbados to thrive in this environment, we must not only adapt but lead.”
Jordan said the FSC intended to play its part by “transforming regulation into a competitive advantage, making Barbados a jurisdiction known for speed, efficiency, and excellence in the global financial services sector”.
“At the FSC, we have heard the concerns from our stakeholders. We know that while Barbados has many strengths, the speed of regulatory approvals has been an area of frustration,” he told participants at the event organised by BIBA, the Association for Global Business, and held at Wyndham Grand Barbados Sam Lord’s Castle.
Processing delays
“Delays in processing applications can cost us opportunities, and in a competitive global market, speed matters.”
The chairman said that during a recent meeting, Mottley “warned us of the growing competition from Alberta, which, if left unchecked, could destabilise our fiscal landscape by attracting the very captive insurance business we need to sustain our economy”.
“This is a wake-up call and we are taking decisive action. FSC is committed to becoming more than just a regulator – we want to be a strategic partner to the industry, a catalyst for innovation, and a key pillar of Barbados’ fiscal stability,” he asserted.
In 2022, Alberta introduced legislation permitting the formation and licensing of captive insurers. Captive insurance is a form of self-insurance.
Canadian business law firm Stikeman Elliott explained that until 2022,
only British Columbia licensed captive insurance companies in Canada, but only a few were ever formed. Historically, most Canadian captives were formed in the United States and the Caribbean, the firm noted. Jordan said that as part of plans to make Barbados an even more attractive domicile for captive insurance, the FSC first planned to focus on enhancing speed and transparency.
“We . . . are in the process of ensuring that our entire application process becomes faster, more efficient, and more transparent,” he announced.
“We recognise that to eliminate the bottlenecks we have to map out each stage of the application process and both identify the inefficiencies and remove unnecessary steps.
“For straightforward applications, we will implement a fast-track system, allowing us to issue conditional approvals more quickly while conducting due diligence in parallel.
Leverage technology
“We will also improve communication with applicants, providing clear timelines and regular status updates to eliminate uncertainty,” he added. There is also a plan to “leverage technology to streamline processes”, which includes the upcoming launch of a state-of-theart application management system, which will digitise and automate key parts of the approval process, and is built with artificial intelligence capabilities. Jordan also said that over the next 12 months the FSC will provide targeted training by bringing in global insurance experts who understand the nuances of captive insurance, enterprise risk management, and emerging risks like cryptocurrency.
The regulator will also enhance its decisionmaking skills “by ensuring that our analysts can quickly differentiate between routine and complex applications and apply risk-based principles in their assessments”.
Jordan said, too, that “to ensure that Barbados remains competitive, we have also been benchmarking our regulatory framework against leading jurisdictions”.
The FSC is also “integrating climate risk, digital transformation, and enterprise risk management into our regulatory strategy to ensure that Barbados remains a hub for innovative, sustainable financial services”. (SC)
