Keeping an eye out for key industry trends and developments is critical for corporate and finance communications professionals in a rapidly changing environment.

Here’s the Crystal team’s regular snapshot of some of the highlights and points of note from around the jurisdictions this past month…

• Guernsey: The Guernsey Financial Services Commission has launched an ‘Innovation Sandbox + Concierge’, a new initiative designed to support innovation in finance, as part of a broader Digital Finance Initiative.
• Cayman: a new report published by Capital Economics and commissioned by Cayman Finance has highlighted that Cayman’s growing economy masks the fact that earnings per person are dropping, with the rapid growth of construction and tourism driving down Cayman’s GDP per capita.
• BVI: BVI government officials undertook a series of meetings in Brussels and Paris aimed at strengthening relations with the EU.
• Dubai: Projects focusing on capital markets, asset and wealth management, SME financing, virtual assets, and FinTech are amongst the various programmes outlined in the Dubai Financial Sector Strategy, approved in October.
• Luxembourg: Total assets in Luxembourg-domiciled private debt funds increased by a quarter last year, according to an annual survey released by ALFI and KPMG.
• Cayman: the Compass celebrated 60 years since the first issue of the jurisdiction’s national newspaper.
• Tokenisation: The FCA launched a consultation on new rules for fund tokenisation and direct-to-fund dealing, with the aim of giving firms more clarity and confidence to adopt tokenization.
• Non-Doms: A new study by former Treasury economist Chris Walker found that at least 1,800 non-doms have relocated since the UK government went ahead with plans to abolish the non-domicile status last year, 50% more than last year’s predictions.
• AI: Media are continuing to get bombarded by AI generated stories, highlighting a growing tension in the evolution and application of AI in the comms space.