Good Afternoon,

As the Premier has said, the purpose of the mission to London was to meet members of the new Labour led Parliament and Government. Given the importance of Climate Change to this territory, we took the opportunity to meet climate change and climate finance experts in the public and private sector, officials in key government departments and the private financial services sector.

I am pleased to now make a few comments about the Value of the visit in relation to our financial services industry. 

Firstly, the visit was an excellent opportunity to update ourLondon based Virgin Islands financial services sector on our National Action Plan implementation which followed publication of the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force, Mutual Evaluation Report (MER). I was delighted to see at least 30 members of our London circle attend the briefing to ensure they are aware of the degree to which we are strengthening our regulatory and legislative financial services regimes to remain best-in-class and our continued commitment to adhere to global standards.

I am pleased to say that during the visit we were also able to brief officials in both HM Treasury (HMT)and the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FDCO). We were especially happy that the Treasury team was led by the Director of Financial Services, Richard Knox.

Officials welcomed our progress on the National Action Plan and in relation to publicly accessible registers of beneficial ownership. We are grateful for their support on these matters and in terms of the latter we are now moving forward with our consultation, particularly around the definition of ‘legitimate interest’. 

As the Premier has said, the issue of climate change was a primary focus for the visit with the delegation meeting key UK Government officials as well as Baroness Brown, Chair of the Climate Change Adaptation Sub-Committee.

Given that the Virgin Islands is currently unable to access funds emanating from the UN Climate Change Convention and the Paris Agreement, we know that private sector climate finance will be an important element in helping the Virgin Islands build resilience and develop adaptation measures to help mitigate the impact of climate change.

This entire territory is experiencing the cost of adapting to climate change, especially in the high cost of insurancepremiums. I am pleased to say that we had an excellent roundtable with key members of the blue capital private sector, which included senior representatives of the Howden Group, one of the largest insurers in the world. We agreed that investability and insurability will be key to attracting significant private investment into the Virgin Islands. I am determined to continue our discussions with these experts to assess how we can best utilise their support. Importantly, we will also be looking at how we can best incorporate our financial services expertise into this effort. I was pleased that Peter Tarn, formerly of Harneys was able to join the meeting.

Given our situation, and during our meeting with the Department for Climate Change and Net Zero, FCDO officials confirmed that climate change will form a major part of the agenda for the JMC. In addition, today it is reported that the Foreign Secretary, Rt Hon David Lammy MP, will appoint a special envoy for nature for the first time. As you can imagine, we will be writing to ensure that the Overseas Territories, including the Virgin Islands are top of that individual’s agenda.

There is much to do as we move forwards. I am confident that the links we have made will enable us to progress in these key areas and I look forward to working closely with many of the experts we connected with.