YOU don’t have to be a journalist to know that it can be very difficult to get information out of the government.

One of the tools we have is the Freedom of Information Law, which – as I am sure many of you know – allows anyone to request information held by public bodies.

It has its limitations (if the government wants to keep something hidden they can usually find a relevant exemption) but it is a powerful weapon in the fight for open government and against graft and corruption.

In the UK, fellow journalists and I use the FoI Act often: including to request information from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the regulatory body for the finance industry.

So this week, I fired off a request under the Freedom of Information Law to the Jersey equivalent of the FCA, the Jersey Financial Services Commission (JFSC).
Guess what, it didn’t work.

I was informed that the JFSC is not considered a public body and, as such, cannot be FoI-ed.

A little digging revealed that I am not the first person to be surprised about this.

In August 2022, a complainant mounted a valiant effort via the FoI appeals process to argue that the JFSC was a public body and should be subject to FoI.

He or she (FoI requests are anonymous so our complainant will have to remain in the shadows) took their battle all the way to the commissioner, the final stage of appeal, and, in April 2023 it was finally rejected.

The commissioner’s report, which is available online, points out that the FoI Law of 2011 specifically excludes the JFSC from the law.

It also excludes the Jersey Competition Regulatory Authority, Jersey Law Commission, the Jersey Appointments Commission and the now defunct Waterfront Enterprise Board, “or successor” which, of course, is now Ports of Jersey, which is also exempt from the law.

“The Law will not apply to these bodies until they are added to Schedule 1 by Regulation, and there are no immediate plans to do so,” it says.

Why? Well, I will accept answers to that question on a postcard, but it does seem strange to me that the FCA is subject to the UK FoI legislation and its Jersey equivalent isn’t.

What it means practically is that it is extremely difficult for journalists to get information out of a body that regulates the Island’s finance industry, our biggest employer and economic keel.

I’ve been told by a number of people that the JFSC has been increasingly difficult to work with, and so after my FoI bid went nowhere, I asked the JFSC outright for the information I wanted:

“How many complaints have been made against the regulator in each of the last five years? Of these, how many were upheld? What was the result of those that were upheld?”

I was told that, until November 2023, data on complaints was not collected and there was no requirement for the JFSC to report complaints made against it – which is odd because that is exactly what they require of the people they regulate. What’s good for the golden goose is not, apparently, good for the gander.

As such, the first report on complaints against the JFSC – which was set up in 1998(!) – will not be released until it is approved by the board, at some point around the end of 2024.

I asked for data gathered prior to 2023 and was pointed in the direction of the JFSC’s 2024 Industry Survey, only the second(!!) that the body has ever commissioned.

It was carried out by an independent market research agency and received a total of 416 respondents, including trust companies, fund service providers, investment, accountancy, banking and insurance businesses.

Confusingly, 18 of these were then handpicked to take part in in-depth interviews which added “context and detail” to the initial results.

Methods like these, my friends, is why freedom-of-information is so important: How about you just give us the data – all 416 responses – and we interpret it.

Anyway, the findings weren’t all bad: 24% of respondents believed that the JFSC acts “very well” in the best interests of Jersey (up from 23% last year) and 42% that it does so “well”, down from 49% in 2023. Only 7% answered “not at all” (the remaining 27% chose “somewhat”).

But the report also found issues with timeliness and consistency, as well as the perception that the JFSC is evasive and unapproachable.

Over half (55%) of those polled said that their engagement with the JFSC had got worse compared to a year earlier.

So, something is going on at Jersey’s regulator, and in the absence of the usual channels to find out exactly what, I am relying on you.

Are you a local company that has had experiences with the JFSC and want to talk about it discreetly? What is the general experience of the finance industry when it comes to the regulator? Could things be done better, and if so how? Is the golden goose at risk of being strangled by heavy-handed overregulation?

Reach out to me at orlando@allisland. media or 07473 254086.

What do you think?

•What has your experience been with the JFSC?

•Have you made a complaint against the regulator? Were you satisfied with the outcome?

Send your thoughts to editorial@ jerseyeveningpost.com or #jointhedebate on social media