How will the vaccine roll out in different jurisdictions impact cross-border businesses? What will professional advisors need to ensure best practice and governance are carried out?

The vaccine roll out in other jurisdictions has a massive impact on our economy. The more you see, for example in the United States, the vaccine roll-out spread across the country, you can see that people are more willing to travel, so airlines are more willing to put on flights. And we’re so dependent on that.

It’s same with the UK when it eventually opens a travel corridor. Also, Canada. They’re all linked to how the vaccine roll-out is going on in those jurisdictions. That has a direct impact on our own economy. How do you ensure best practice here? We still have the mask mandate here, but we can see even internally that that policy is being changed and shifted depending on the vaccination rates within the country.

I’m sure that will that be the case if the people who are travelling here are vaccinated; different models will apply. For example, we are an archipelago of a number of different islands with varying populations. Providenciales is the main centre of the population here, but we’ve got smaller islands that are also inhabited.

It’s recognising that once this vaccine has been rolled out and we have a certain percentage of our population vaccinated – aiming at 70% – that’s when restrictions on business and people’s individual freedoms will be lifted. Salt Cay, one of the Islands that makes up the Turks and Caicos Islands is now completely free of all restrictions for its residents and any vaccinated visitors, as it reached 95% vaccination rate. If other countries’ vaccination rates are high, then business and people will come here and free up the economy.

It’s affected us as professional advisors in terms of the job and the workload. There was a period when our queries were dominated by the Covid question. What you can do, what you can’t do, what we’re restricted from doing, what we can do to adapt our businesses. How do we deal with employees? There’s a lot of employment law work. Cruises haven’t arrived in these islands since March and that’s a massive restriction with a severe economic impact on those cruise reliant businesses, particularly in Grand Turk.