Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes

By John D K Lawrence AIB, Superintendent, TCI Financial Services Commission

This Latin quotation is to be found in one of Juvenals Satires. The original context highlighted the problem of hiring guards to prevent infidelity amongst women, when husbands were out of town. The modern challenge more likely to avoid the assignment of a fox to guard the henhouse.

So who will "guard the guards themselves" and why do we need guards in the first place? The financial industry has experienced substantial cross-border growth in recent times, involving businesses, for the most part, that are solid and well managed. However, as we know, even solid businesses can trip up from time to time and not all international growth in financial services comes from the blue chip company. A growth environment also enables individuals of less scrupulous character to take advantage of opportunities to defraud, either deliberately or through mismanagement, unsuspecting members of the public through