MORE than three years after the Stocks and Securities Limited (SSL) scandal put Jamaica’s financial oversight under international scrutiny, records showed that the cost of supervising the securities industry was already more than twice the fees collected from the sector — even before the Financial Services Commission (FSC) added the next layer of costs for new technology, market-conduct supervision and consumer-protection functions.

The securities sector, where clients, including sprint legend Usain Bolt, reported that millions of US dollars were missing from investment accounts, carried the largest identified regulatory funding gap.

The FSC projected that supervising the industry would cost $678.3 million in 2023/24 but that its existing fees would recover only $323.4 million — a shortfall of $354.9 million.