KINGSTON, Jamaica — For years, Paul Simpson’s international engagements could easily have been read as high-level networking: a Jamaican financial-sector executive photographed with global political and business figures at major international forums.

But as Cornerstone moves Barita into a new phase involving digital banking, asset management, real estate, regional expansion and technology-led financial services, those meetings are being presented by the group as part of a broader process: studying how larger and faster-moving economies have built the systems Jamaica now needs to compete.

The photographs tell part of that story.