GUERNSEY must do more to attract business from jurisdictions that are more aggressive at promoting themselves. New Guernsey Finance chief executive Talmai Morgan also echoed recent comments made by Commerce and Employment minister Stuart Falla on the need for joined-up promotion of the island’s commercial activity.

‘I totally agree with such thinking. It really doesn’t make sense to have the solo approach of tourism promoting itself, horticulture promoting itself and finance promoting itself etc.,’ said Mr Morgan, who took over from John Bridle as the head of the promotional agency a month ago.

‘We have limited resources in Guernsey and we must therefore use them to maximum possible effect. It really does not make any sense for the different sectors of our economy to promote themselves in isolation. No economic sector operates in a vacuum.’

He said that a more combined approach by ‘team Guernsey’ should yield economies of scale in the more efficient deployment of resources and some cross-fertilisation of fresh ideas.

‘There is everything to be gained by adopting this more open minded and innovative approach and I look forward to participating in this wider promotional effort, which simply has to succeed,’ he said.

Mr Morgan was speaking at a recent Chamber of Commerce lunch, at which Deputy Falla had spoken last month.

He said the finance industry had weathered some very significant challenges over the last five years or so, such as the IMF report, the Edwards report and the OECD’s report on harmful tax competition.

The agency exists as a result of the 1998 report by Andrew Edwards, which recommended that the role of promoting the industry should be separate from its regulation, a view backed by the IMF.

Now employing Mr Morgan and two part-time staff, it is keen to promote the finance industry as effectively as possible.

‘As you know, we are living in an extremely competitive global market place and our competitors have got better and better in their promotional efforts,’ he said.

‘We therefore have no choice but to lift our own game and to better ourselves.’

The former director of fiduciary and intelligence services at the Guernsey Financial Services Commission is also pushing for a closing working relationship with industry.

He said that with some companies having offices in several jurisdictions, it does not matter to them where business goes.

‘Guernsey acting in a corporate sense therefore must seek to ensure that Guernsey is high up there in the mind of the potential client,’ he said.

‘But even where a business is represented only in Guernsey, that business can scarcely be expected to represent Guernsey as a whole, or to be aware of and able to defend and explain various attributes relating to Guernsey and its businesses as a whole.’

The answer is for organisations such as Guernsey Finance to represent and promote Guernsey and the challenge is for it to understand industry and involve its representatives, he said.

‘The finance industry must feel that the agency is working for it and with it, and the industry must be able to perceive that the agency is actually adding value to the whole process.

‘The agency must be an integral part of the finance industry and not regarded as the equivalent of some distant mountain peak.’