Is It Time To Accept That Guernsey’s Regulatory Enforcement Process Is No Longer “fit And Proper”?

There “is something unsatisfactory about a disciplinary system that possesses ‘many of the hallmarks’ of an independent and impartial tribunal but in which independence is inherently absent”.

Those were the words of the former Bailiff, Sir Richard Collas, in the 2020 decision of Chick v. Guernsey Financial Services Commission (“GFSC”), in describing Guernsey’s Senior Decision Maker (“SDM”) process through which regulatory enforcement decisions are made.

Six years on, his words continue to ring true. For those who have experienced Guernsey’s regulatory enforcement process, whether before or since Sir Richard’s remarks, the concern he identified remains a fundamental one – a process may bear the hallmarks of independence and impartiality, but that is not the same as being independent and impartial.