Cheryl-Ann Lister has been the chief executive officer of the Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA) for almost eight years. Having seen the BMA through a difficult period, with change the only constant, she will retire from the post in mid-August this year. The work she has done, and is still doing for the BMA, has been acclaimed by those in the financial services sector, both here and abroad.

Mrs. Lister’s background, prior to joining the BMA, was in investments and finance. In the 1990s, she was running a trading company that specialised in international debt, when the pressures of bringing up a family caused her to take some time off and act as a consultant for various companies in the financial field.

Following the election of the Progressive Labour Party, in 1999 new Finance Minister Eugene Cox (the present Minister Paula’s father) cast around for a “safe pair of hands” to take over at the BMA, which was in those days largely a department of the Ministry of Finance. Mr. Cox approached Mrs. Lister to be the chairman of the BMA, a position that was on the very cusp of dramatic change.

The BMA that Mrs. Lister took over had about 30 people. It was responsible for the Bermuda dollar — printing dollars and controlling the currency so that it would retain its value for the benefit of Bermudians — and the registration, monitoring and supervision of the companies in Bermuda’s financial sector.

To understand Mrs. Lister’s achievements, it is necessary to recall how Bermuda’s international business interests developed.

From the very beginning, in the 1950s, it was clear to all concerned that a small, remote place like Bermuda would need to maintain a squeaky-clean reputation. To that end, the government and the legal and accounting professions put in place a system of thoroughly vetting anyone who wanted to base their financial operations in Bermuda.

The idea was to know Bermuda’s customers.

If the authorities looked carefully at those who wanted to do business from here, it could keep to an absolute minimum the number of business people who were less than 100 percent upright.

The system worked well for a long time. The odd bad apples that are bound to crop up when billions of dollars are at stake were few and far between. Bermuda maintained its reputation for decades without a written code of practice; quality control was carried out by those in a position to know who they were dealing with.

Bermuda succeeded, as we all know, in incredible fashion. By the mid-1990s, when the first great wave of reinsurance companies was established here, international business was well on the way to providing a great deal of Bermuda’s bread and butter.

So successful were the new financial centres, many of whom followed the Bermuda model, that they began to attract international attention — both from high-ranking financial people, and from crooks, drug dealers, terrorists and other criminals, who needed to find ways to launder their illegal gains. While the financial world was beginning to find ways to deal with this scourge, the financing of the events in the US on September 11, 2001 and the scandals of Enron and the other companies ended once and for all the use of informality in the scrutiny of business. The process of regulation and monitoring had to be beefed up if countries wanted to keep the respect of other nations and be allowed to play a part in the financial sector on the world stage.

Mrs. Lister’s job, therefore, was to professionalise the BMA and take it to the new level demanded by governments around the world.

The “Know Your Customer” or “KYC” code that had operated so successfully in Bermuda in an informal manner was, during Mrs. Lister’s first years at the BMA, solidified into a written set of rules that matched the highest standards in the world, well before global KYC standards were established.

To give credence to the activities of the BMA, it has to be an independent body, not subject to the whims of politicians of any party or other outside influences. That is an inflexible rule in financial activities. Perhaps Mrs. Lister’s greatest achievement was to bring independence to the Authority as it moved out from under the wing of the Ministry of Finance.

As the BMA took on greater responsibility for the supervision of companies operating in Bermuda — not just the reinsurance companies and banks, but everyone involved in the financial services sector, the Bermuda Government enacted new laws granting greater power to the BMA.

The independence and adherence to international standards of the BMA is critical because other regulatory agencies rely on the work the BMA does when considering licensing Bermuda companies elsewhere. A strong BMA, up to the world standard, enables Bermuda to be considered in the same way as the US, UK or any of the major economies. Mrs. Lister’s job was to achieve that, and then maintain and improve upon it.

In 2002, in light of its new powers, the BMA restructured itself, with a board of directors drawn from Bermuda’s best and brightest in the fields of finance, and an outside board to look over their shoulders. Mrs. Lister was named chief executive officer as well as chairman, to reflect the realities of the new BMA. At first, she was able to fill both positions, but the growth in the BMA’s workload — and its staff, who now number 100, and counting meant that late last year, Mrs. Lister told her board that the two positions had become too onerous for one person and should be split between two “pairs of safe hands”. Alan Richardson was appointed chairman, and Mrs. Lister, having given the BMA her all for so long, decided not to renew her position later this year, allowing plenty of time for a successor to be found and a smooth transition to take place.

Mrs. Lister is married to Terry Lister, a leading light of the Progressive Labour Party. They have four children, Keisha, Letitia, Monique and James. Very active in her church, Mrs. Lister teaches Sunday school, plays the piano and organ and works with the choir. The bulk of her non-work time is spent with her family.

Cometh the time, cometh the woman