identified and to allocate our resources to areas that have the greatest impact in the fight against financial crime. while traditionally the financial sector was seen as the most vulnerable sector to ml / tf risks, in the face of heightened regulatory focus and more advanced aml / cft legislation and procedures governing this sector, money launderers started to resort to the nonfinancial sector to conceal their proceeds of crime. in response, the fatf increased its focus on the designated non - financial businesses and professions ( dnfbps ) that have similar potential to financial institutions to be used for money laundering. casinos, real estate agents, dealers in precious metals and stones, barristers, attorneys, notaries, accountants and trust and company service providers – referred to as the dnfbps in the fatf standards – are, since may 2019, subject to the same aml / cft requirements and preventive measures as financial institutions regulated by the bank of mauritius and the financial services commission. the need to enhance the regulatory and supervisory capabilities of the aml / cft supervisors of dnfbps can, thus, only be underscored. ladies and gentlemen, the scale and complexity of evolving financial products and technologies bring along new risks. to identify, evaluate, mitigate and monitor those risks, operators in the financial and non - financial sectors alike have to put in place robust risk management systems and ensure they are periodically upgraded. obviously regulators and supervisors have to keep pace with the rapid evolution of risk associated with new services, technologies and products. these require new resources and regular upgrading of skills both among supervisors of the financial and non - financial sectors. risk - based supervision is gradually taking precedence in aml / cft supervisors ’ approach around the globe. this approach is evidently much more data - centric and thus more demanding technically. risk - based supervisory frameworks require aml / cft supervisors to continuously identify, understand, assess and monitor the risk profiles of their licensees. these institutions are monitored both for compliance with the rules and how they approach and adopt risk management. ladies and gentlemen, let me now say a few words on what the bank of mauritius has been doing on aml / cft in recent year. the implementation of the risk - based approach was one of the key recommendations of the mutual evaluation report of 2018 to enhance the effectiveness of the aml / cft system. the bank of mauritius has spared no effort to set up an aml / cft

, such a possibility is extremely remote. some attributed the crisis to the fact that the cypriot banking sector was disproportionate to the size of the economy. this led to the policy prescription of a quantitative limit on banking assets of 3. 5 times of gdp, arbitrarily proposed at the eu level. with the benefit of hindsight, we can assert that such a limit would not have prevented the kind of problems encountered by cyprus. the truth lies in the fact that cyprus was excessively exposed to greece on the assets side and to russia on the liabilities side. the lesson that i draw from this is not that ifc ’ s as a class are bound to disappear or, at best, condemned to a slow death. i would rather argue that small country ifc ’ s need to exercise care in the conduct of their business, appropriately assess potential sources of risk and better manage their asset and liability mix. both of these points are clearly illustrated in the next two slides, which compare cyprus banking ratios and financial soundness indicators, with three other offshore jurisdictions including luxemburg and mauritius. malta and luxemburg have 8 times and 17 times of their gdp, respectively, by way of banking assets. but their fsi ’ s in the next slide, show that they had a more robust banking sector, as reflected for example by their non - performing loans – less than 0. 5 % for luxemburg while it was nearly 16 % for cyprus. the case of luxemburg provides ample evidence of the solidity of the banking sector of a country even when its banking assets represent 17 times its gdp. the short story is that the cyprus episode does have lessons for other jurisdictions but it has no immediate relevance for most of them because they do not run their banking and finance the way cyprus did. it certainly does not mark the end of the road for solid, transparent, wellregulated ifc ’ s. iii. which brings me rather neatly to mauritius and its home - grown model of an ifc. the previous two slides provide an indication of the size of the mauritius offshore banking sector and its financial soundness. our banking sector assets are less than three times our gdp, the lowest in the sample, and evenly divided between domestic and offshore assets. the fsi ’ s show a sound banking sector, well - capitalised and nearer luxemburg on most measures with, for example, non - performing loans at less than 4 %, half the level