SCB is the abbreviation of “The Securities Commission of The Bahamas (SCB).” This sector is working as the main organisation responsible for the regulation and oversight of the financial services industry that falls within the territory of the Bahamas. In 1995, SCB was first introduced under the supervised terms of the Securities Board Act (1995).
And now, it has modernized the sector of financial services in the Bahamas.
Its current main office is located in the Nassau area of The Bahamas, where it is working under the small staff collaboration of 72 employees working full-time. SCB has grown to a new level in the past few years once the Bahamas’ financial services industry was established.
They have even introduced some new rules for properly regulating the financial services providing CFD and Forex trading services.
Mission
The main mission of SCB is to effectively regulate and oversee basic activities lined with the investment funds or the capital markets. It even protects the investors for strengthening the public and the institutional confidence within the integrity of all those markets.
Vision
It acts as a competitive and vibrant financial service sector based on sound regulatory practices and policies that fully promote confidence.
What are the regulator’s powers and areas of SCB?
The primary purpose of SCB is to establish an effective regulatory oversight in certain areas of securities, investment funds, and capital markets. For the sake of investor protection, the SCB has been empowered within specific pieces of the legislation that the Parliament of The Bahamas has passed. Hence, this includes the Securities Board Act (1995) as well as the Securities Industry Act (201) and the Investment Funds Act (2019), along with the Financial and Corporate Service Providers Act (2003). In addition, you will also witness the involvement of the Financial Transaction Reporting Act (2018).
Through this entire legislative framework, the concept of SCB is having a wide range of elemental statutory powers. A few of the common powers are reporting advisory functions and the capability to find the corporate entities. Plus, it also has some broader powers for investigating few financial services companies where it is necessary to deem into.
Apart from it, SCB is also empowered to somehow issue the license to different investment fund administrators who have been operating within or even from The Bahamas under the supervision of the Investment Funds Act (2003). In the same way, the Securities Industry Act (1999) provides the SCB with some varied powers for the proper regulation of the securities within their region. These powers will cover all the activities, including financial bonds, public shares, or financial instruments. Just recently, it has even started the access of offering investor education resources.
Important functions
A few of the significant functions of SCB are:
- Give the Minister some essential advice on different matters related to the capital markets and the participants.
- Maintain proper surveillance inside the capital market and ensure a fair and equitable supply of dealings in the securities.
- Foster the accurate, timely, efficient, and fair disclosure of the information towards the public investment and the capital markets.
- It helps protect the capital market and its integrity against any abuse that arises in market misconduct, financial crime, or various improper practices.
- Promoting a specific understanding by the public over the capital markets and the participants highlights the risks, benefits, or liabilities associated with the investment.
- Creating and promoting varied conditions which help facilitate the orderly development of capital markets.
- Perform all the functions which are imposed or conferred by the securities laws or the Parliament.
What is the role of SCB in global banking?
If we talk about the role of SCB in world banking activities, it is fully emphasizing the international reputation and quality of all financial institutions. There have been around 150 banks and various trust companies licensed to perform their business through SCB. These companies represent various countries such as Japan, France, UK, the US, Brazil, and France.
Over the last few years, there has been a high development in portfolio management, private banking, and mutual fund administration. They are all reinforcing the SCB to be the safest platform for the financial assets of individuals and various corporations.
Well, the Central Bank of The Bahamas has been supervising all the banks and the trust companies. They maintain a proper setup for establishing a regulatory environment that is entirely conducive to investment opportunities. It is at the same time ensuring the high standards of conduct and operations towards the banking supervision.
How to know if the SCB regulates the broker?
Sometimes the broker might not be regulated by SCB, which you do not know about! In that case, you should be checking the official site of SCB and see if the broker has its license number registered or listed on the site. If yes, you can even view some of the records of that broker, which is already available on the SCB. Use the search function to know more about the broker.
If you are not having a license number of your own, you can even conduct a general search through the SCB online. You can even check the whole regulatory status of the specific company and make sure that they are in the proper positioning within the SCB. Finally, send your queries directly to the SCB through email if you cannot find the company or the broker through their search function.
Bottom line
To sum up the whole SCB discussion, we will state that the SCB regulatory entity has played a vital role in properly administering investment in the financial sector to date today. The investment funds industry has boosted a lot and has seen massive growth in the last few years. SCB is signing few more projectors for designing robust legislation to enhance and strengthen the regulation inside the securities market.