Bermuda is maturing as an international business jurisdiction as the Government machinery needed to deal with the weight of the tiny Island's outsize international business sector continues to develop.

The Finance Ministry's International Business team is a major cog in the gears of that machine, a point of contact between the private sector and Government, as well as an idea-gathering unit, particularly in terms of legislation with potential to strengthen the Island as a business centre.

Their work touches on areas like regulation and compliance, licensing and applications, as well as domestic and international communications. The unit works in conjunction with the likes of the Bermuda Monetary Authority, the Registrar of Companies, the Bermuda International Business Association, and several private-sector bodies representing international business.

The team is led by Pamela Burrows, the Assistant Financial Secretary (International Business), who gave an interview yesterday, along with her colleagues, Legislative Assistant Travis Gilbert and Legislative Consultant Shauna MacKenzie.

Ms Burrows, who has a background in banking, said communications was a critical part of her job, and that she had been helped in that aspect by policy analyst training with the Civil Service.

"We have to know how to write for Cabinet Ministers, the press and for speech material," Ms Burrows said.

"If the Finance Minister makes a speech at RIMS (the Risk and Insurance Management Society's annual conference), for example, we pull together ideas for input from groups like ABIR and the BMA."

In a world in which offshore financial centres are coming increasingly under scrutiny, effective communication, particularly on matters of international business, is key to the Island's reputation and its economy.

Ms Burrows said ensuring the media, local and international, receive accurate responses to questions in a timely manner is considered an important part of the communications function of the Ministry.

"We monitor what the media, local and international is saying about Bermuda companies and the Finance Ministry," she said, adding that anything appearing in the local media can quickly be picked up overseas.

"When anyone in the Ministry receives a question from the media, we go into action immediately to get an answer — and we try to provide that answer as quickly as possible."

Legislation is another key role of the team. The private sector may come in with ideas on how to add to laws on the books or enhance exisiting ones, or the ideas may come from what other jurisdictions are doing.

Proposals often stem from the private sector and go via the International Business Unit, which will draft the proposals with input from legal experts, and pass them to the Finance Minister, who may take the plans to Cabinet. From Cabinet, the plans go to the House of Assembly.

The result is an ever-involving legal framework, being constantly honed to keep Bermuda competitive in the world of international business.

"The Ministry of Finance provides more than 50 percent of Government's legislative agenda," Ms Burrows said. "For example a new product for the trust industry is going through the system now and may be ready to go to the House by the summer."

As Bermuda has evolved as an international finance centre, so has the Ministry of Finance. Ms MacKenzie, who also works with the Ministry's Treaty Unit, said: "Since the time I started here 13 years ago, the system has matured. It's developed tremendously since the days when the Finance Minister had to deal with everything."

She gave the example of the Financial Intelligence Agency, an independent body of experts designed to act as a clearing house for Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs), as an example of a maturing system.

And Ms MacKenzie believes Bermuda will fare well in an era of increasing transparency requirements. "We know the beneficial owners of our companies and that's not something that every jurisdiction can say," she said.