GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands – Cayman Finance welcomes the progress by Tax Justice Network (TJN) towards a more realistic measure of financial secrecy in its 2022 Financial Secrecy Index (FSI). By improving the report's methodology, the FSI highlights that the greatest threat from financial secrecy comes from some of the largest "onshore" countries such as the US, Japan and Germany. The Cayman Islands, on the other hand, is now given a transparency rating that puts it down in fourteenth place — more transparent than five G20 countries.
"TJN's new report reflects some of the concerns previously raised by Cayman Finance and we look forward to continued improvements in TJN methodology and data so future reports can more accurately and credibly reflect the realities of global financial services," said Conor O'Dea, the Chairman of Cayman Finance. "The Cayman Islands' tax neutral regime is recognised internationally for its transparency and tax good governance principles thanks to strong collaboration by the Cayman Islands Government and the Cayman Islands financial services industry – and that work continues."
Last fall, Cayman Finance released an analysis of TJN's 2020 Financial Secrecy Index which stated that "TJN chose to use portfolio liabilities instead of publicly-available data for financial services exports. As a result, TJN's estimate of GSW [Global Scale Weight] for Cayman was nearly 9 times what it should have been."
The 2022 FSI used the more accurate financial services export data Cayman Finance had highlighted, with TJN noting that "true scale of the financial services [Cayman] provides to non-residents [was revealed] to be significantly lower than previously estimated." Cayman's score on the 2022 FSI improved considerably due to those changes.
Cayman Finance analyses of TJN reports, and other research, can be found at www.caymanfinance.ky.