WITH the tail end of the global financial crisis still lashing financial systems across the Caribbean, a conference on ‘Bank Insolvency in the Caribbean: Law and Best Practice’ is never more timely.

The Jamaica Deposit Insurance Corporation (JDIC) yesterday launched its first Caribbean Bank Insolvency Conference to be held March 24 to 26, 2010, at the Rose Hall Resort and Spa in Montego Bay, Jamaica. The conference will see over 20 experts from countries across the Caribbean, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom speak on matters relevant to the global financial crisis, international initiatives towards best practices and resolutions for bank insolvencies. The International Monetary Fund and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development will also be represented at the conference.

Antionette McKain, CEO of the JDIC, said that the conference is in keeping with the organisation’s public education and awareness business strategy to increase the public’s level of awareness of matters affecting the financial system stability.

“That is why we have programmes like this including the conference to allow people to know how the system operates, how it should operate, so they can remain confident. When people hear that a bank may have a challenge, people don’t run on the bank because you are confident that the system will deal with it in an orderly and effective manner,” McKain said.

She said that it is also important that the persons whose decisions and actions will even indirectly impact the safety net are also fully aware of how the financial regulatory system is designed to operate so that they too can play an effective role. “We know that those indirectly involved in the system must know about it or else the system will not be as efficient, as effective and as orderly as we would want the financial system to be when there are difficulties. Financial instability is not something that can be cured it will always exist,” McKain posited.

For this reason, the conference targets members of the judiciary, lawyers, officials of banks and other financial institutions, officials of the ministries of finance, accountants, auditors, university lecturers and professors in economics, business and management across the Caribbean to ensure that all involved in the system knows how it works. Though the target audience includes regulators and policymakers, the conference is open to everyone.

Speakers from major financial centres across the world will make presentations at the conference. They include Yosuke Kawakami, Japan’s executive director, Deposit Insurance Corporation; Rick Osterman, deputy general counsel, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation of the US; Patrick Loeb, director, Deposit Protection of Swiss Banks and Securities Dealers; Jean Pierre Sabourin, CEO, Malaysia Deposit Insurance Corporation; Mr Guy Saint-Pierre, president and CEO, Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation; and Sir K Dwight Venner, governor of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank. Other speakers from the Caribbean: Bermuda, Barbados, Trinidad, the Cayman Islands, and Jamaica will also make presentations.

“These people have just dealt with it and are continuing to deal with it. To have them here is a unique opportunity and I think as many persons as possible, whether you are directly or indirectly, or likely to be involved in the financial sector, should see it as an opportunity,” McKain said.