Premium
Offshore Financial Services and the Internet: Creating Confidence in the Use of Cyberspace?
Author(s) -
Cobb Sharon
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
growth and change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.657
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1468-2257
pISSN - 0017-4815
DOI - 10.1111/1468-2257.00216
Subject(s) - business , the internet , extranet , sophistication , finance , financial services , transparency (behavior) , computer security , computer science , social science , intranet , sociology , world wide web
The use of the Internet and World Wide Web (WWW) as a distributive medium is seen by many businesses as a legitimate way to cut costs of operation. Confidence is growing in the use of this medium to transact business because of the increasing sophistication of firewalls, encryption software, and digital key technology. This paper presents empirical evidence from one offshore financial center where the process of legislative and regulatory reform put in place to establish confidence in the traditional provision of offshore financial services is now being used to regulate and legitimize the online distribution of such services. The results show that all firms surveyed for this study use the Internet for routine brochure‐ware purposes and the larger firms (particularly in the offshore life insurance sector) are developing more sophisticated customized transactional functions via extranet platforms. Tensions exist though with respect to “regulatory grasp” via the Internet, as offshore places are being put under increased pressure by supranational organizations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to require greater transparency in offshore financial transactions.