TTSEC in transition: assessing risks, eyeing virtual assets

Geisha Kow­lessar-Alon­zo

As the T&T Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion (TTSEC) marked its 29th mile­stone on Sat­ur­day, the or­gan­i­sa­tion stands as a tes­ta­ment to the re­silience and adapt­abil­i­ty re­quired to nav­i­gate the volatile wa­ters of mod­ern fi­nance.

TTSEC CEO Kester Guy told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that, in its jour­ney, the TTSEC has moved away from the tra­di­tion­al, re­ac­tive rules-based frame­work to­ward a proac­tive, risk-based method­ol­o­gy.

This evo­lu­tion is not mere­ly a change in ad­min­is­tra­tive pol­i­cy, but a fun­da­men­tal reimag­in­ing of what a reg­u­la­tor should be in an era de­fined by rapid digi­ti­sa­tion, shift­ing so­cial be­hav­iour and the bor­der­less na­ture of vir­tu­al as­sets.

The core of this tran­si­tion lies in a phi­los­o­phy that moves be­yond ster­ile da­ta to em­brace the hu­man im­pact of fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty. Re­flect­ing on this mile­stone, Guy ex­plained that the most trans­for­ma­tive achieve­ment has been a strate­gic shift to­ward mod­ernising op­er­a­tions with a hu­man heart at the cen­tre.

“We’ve moved from a rules-based frame­work to a risk-based frame­work, and we are fo­cussed on mod­ernising our op­er­a­tions. At the heart of it is about peo­ple. Peo­ple are in­vestors, so we spend and ded­i­cate a lot of time to make sure that we pro­vide the in­vest­ing pub­lic with the ap­pro­pri­ate guid­ance, ad­vi­sories and ed­u­ca­tion that is re­quired to make sen­si­ble de­ci­sions,” Guy ex­plained.

By plac­ing the in­vestor at the cen­tre of the reg­u­la­to­ry mod­el, the TTSEC has fun­da­men­tal­ly al­tered how it in­ter­prets mar­ket be­hav­iour.

“We are about fo­cussing on be­hav­iour and en­sur­ing that all the par­tic­i­pants with­in the mar­ket be­have, con­duct them­selves with the lev­el of in­tegri­ty.

“And so our en­tire toolk­it is based on pro­vid­ing them with the en­able­ment, the stan­dards, the fo­cus on what we ex­pect from them, and en­sur­ing that we hold them ac­count­able to that,” Guy fur­ther ex­plained.

While es­tab­lish­ing these eth­i­cal stan­dards re­mains a pri­or­i­ty, the TTSEC recog­nis­es that ac­count­abil­i­ty must now ex­tend in­to the dig­i­tal fron­tier.

Tran­si­tion­ing to the dig­i­tal era

The com­mit­ment to trans­paren­cy serves as a bridge to the TTSEC’s im­me­di­ate fu­ture, specif­i­cal­ly its 2026/2027 strate­gic vi­sion.

In a world where fi­nan­cial prod­ucts are de­liv­ered via dig­i­tal plat­forms and pro­mot­ed on so­cial me­dia, the TTSEC has shift­ed its reg­u­la­to­ry base to match the tech­no­log­i­cal so­phis­ti­ca­tion of the mar­ket it over­sees.

A mod­ern reg­u­la­tor, Guy said, must be as ag­ile as the tech­nolo­gies it mon­i­tors.

“Any rea­son­able reg­u­la­tor al­so needs to evolve to en­sure that they keep abreast of the new and emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies that are there with­in the sys­tem. We have seen the method­ol­o­gy for pro­vid­ing fi­nan­cial ser­vices, the mech­a­nism and the de­liv­ery tools have shift­ed… To be ap­pro­pri­ate and to be able to en­sure that we are achiev­ing our man­date, we have al­so shift­ed. So from a reg­u­la­to­ry base, first­ly, we have on-body tools, on-body ser­vice providers who can pro­vide us with cer­tain re­al-time in­tel­li­gence to be able to prop­er­ly po­lice the perime­ter of fi­nan­cial ser­vices,” he said.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, to en­sure that the reg­u­la­tion of vir­tu­al as­sets is both ef­fec­tive and fair, the TTSEC has im­ple­ment­ed a “sand­box” arrange­ment which al­lows it to study var­i­ous busi­ness mod­els and iden­ti­fy spe­cif­ic risks re­lat­ed to cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty and op­er­a­tional in­tegri­ty be­fore im­ple­ment­ing long-term rules.

“The first phase, we’ve cre­at­ed a sand­box. So it al­lows us to look at all those ex­ist­ing play­ers, look at their busi­ness mod­el… iden­ti­fy the risks… Through that sand­box arrange­ment, we are able to peer in­to these op­er­a­tions and find what are the ap­pro­pri­ate stan­dards, find what are the right size reg­u­la­tion that need to be adopt­ed for them,” Guy added.

How­ev­er, as the TTSEC em­braces these in­no­va­tions, it must si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly arm it­self against those who use tech­nol­o­gy to ex­ploit the pub­lic.

Com­bat­ing AI fraud and mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion

As the TTSEC em­braces in­no­va­tion, it must al­so com­bat the rise of dig­i­tal fraud, specif­i­cal­ly the use of AI and “deep­fakes” to mis­lead the pub­lic.

Guy is firm in his stance that the TTSEC would not tol­er­ate the mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of in­di­vid­u­als for un­to­ward schemes, and he urged the pub­lic to use the TTSEC as a re­source be­fore mak­ing in­vest­ments:

“The com­mis­sion does not sup­port in any way a mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion in peo­ple’s form and like­ness, util­is­ing tools, AI gen­er­at­ed to fool peo­ple, hood­wink peo­ple, mis­lead peo­ple… Be­yond all the reg­u­la­to­ry pow­ers that we al­ready have…we have been ex­pand­ing our net­works, which in­clude strength­en­ing our en­gage­ment with TTPS to help treat with some of those crim­i­nal el­e­ments. In re­lat­ing to in­vest­ing, we say, please ask the ques­tions first be­fore you go giv­ing up your mon­ey,” he ad­vised.

This com­mit­ment to lo­cal in­vestor pro­tec­tion serves as a blue­print for the TTSEC’s broad­er am­bi­tions with­in the Caribbean.

Har­mon­i­sa­tion and re­gion­al con­ver­gence

Look­ing to­ward the next decade, Guy said its goal is to ce­ment its rep­u­ta­tion as a trust­ed and re­spon­sive reg­u­la­tor, both na­tion­al­ly and re­gion­al­ly.

“We want to be known as an ef­fec­tive, en­gag­ing reg­u­la­tor. Every­thing we do is built on en­gage­ment and col­lab­o­ra­tion with stake­hold­ers,” Guy said.

That re­gion­al role would take on added sig­nif­i­cance in June 2027, when T&T as­sumes the chair­man­ship of the Caribbean Group of Se­cu­ri­ties Reg­u­la­tors (CGSR).

“This is re­al­ly about con­tin­u­ing work we’ve al­ready start­ed. It speaks to Trinidad and To­ba­go be­ing recog­nised as a ma­ture fi­nan­cial ju­ris­dic­tion in the re­gion,” Guy added.

A ma­jor fo­cus of the CGSR is con­ver­gence around reg­u­la­to­ry prin­ci­ples rather than iden­ti­cal leg­is­la­tion.

“We re­spect each sov­er­eign right to for­mu­late its own leg­isla­tive rules and notwith­stand­ing that is to en­sure that the reg­u­la­to­ry tools and the reg­u­la­to­ry prin­ci­ples are de­liv­ered in a con­sis­tent and har­monised way.

Some key is­sues would be treat­ing with dis­clo­sure stan­dards, hav­ing stan­dard­ised dis­clo­sure and aware­ness. Across the ju­ris­dic­tion, some of the same en­ti­ties are op­er­at­ing across the var­i­ous ju­ris­dic­tions. If they are all pro­vid­ing the same stan­dard re­port­ing then, it al­lows for a lev­el of trans­paren­cy and so on with­in each ju­ris­dic­tion,” Guy ex­plained.

He fur­ther not­ed that an­oth­er area might be how to deal with cri­sis.

“If there’s an is­sue in one ju­ris­dic­tion and the en­ti­ties op­er­ate across bor­ders with­in the re­gion, how do we share in­for­ma­tion? What are the pro­to­cols to en­sure that what­ev­er is hap­pen­ing in one ju­ris­dic­tion might be af­ford­ed to every­body else in the var­i­ous ju­ris­dic­tions? We have the reg­u­la­to­ry col­leges and so on where we sit down with each oth­er and talk about what we see. And so we ex­pect to con­tin­ue to strength­en those frame­works to en­sure that there can be seam­less reg­u­la­to­ry ap­pli­ca­tion de­spite the ju­ris­dic­tion,” Guy added.

Ground­work for the next decade

The path ahead is de­fined by a clear strat­e­gy for en­sur­ing long-term ob­jec­tives are met through col­lab­o­ra­tion, ed­u­ca­tion and tech­no­log­i­cal ex­cel­lence.

Guy’s re­flec­tions paint a pic­ture of a TTSEC ready for the next decade:

“Fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tion is con­tin­u­ous­ly evolv­ing. As a ju­ris­dic­tion, as a com­mis­sion, rather, we are al­so ma­tur­ing. There’s a great fu­ture ahead of us. And we are very clear, we are be­com­ing clear­er in our strat­e­gy for en­sur­ing that these long-term ob­jec­tives are achieved. And we have every­thing in place. All par­ties, all part­ners have been iden­ti­fied. And we are do­ing the nec­es­sary ground­work so that we can achieve our long term ob­jec­tives,” he added.

With its 29th an­niver­sary, the TTSEC isn’t just cel­e­brat­ing its past; it is re­in­forc­ing the foun­da­tion for a more se­cure, dig­i­tal and in­ter­con­nect­ed Caribbean fu­ture.