Parliament has given its support in principle to a Cayman Islands Sovereign Wealth Fund. The Government motion passed on Monday, 5 October, without a division and with no Member speaking against it, after a debate of just over two hours in which the Opposition asked for a place on the working group that will design the fund and Premier André Ebanks MP said he hoped to "put a little aside" in the 2028/29 budget. The Office of the Premier has since told The Caymanian Journal (TCJ) that the invitation to the Opposition and independent Members to nominate members of the group "still stands" and that contributions to a fund "would follow once a framework is in place".

Government Motion No. 3 of 2026-2027, received by the Clerk on 22 September in the Premier's name, commits no public money. It asks the House to support "in principle the establishment of a Cayman Islands Sovereign Wealth Fund, to be held for the benefit of the people of these Islands and to be protected by governance arrangements intended to outlast any administration". It directs the Government to carry out "the research, policy development, consultation and due diligence" needed to decide how the fund should be established, to appoint "a working group of suitably qualified persons" to do that work, and to return to Parliament with proposals, "including any legislation and any appropriation that may be required". The motion records that the fund's purpose, funding, governance, legal form, investment parameters and withdrawal rules are matters "none of which is settled".

The motion's recitals say the Islands "presently enjoy a period of economic and fiscal strength, and a period of strength is the period in which a country is able to save", that their revenue "rests on a small number of recurring sources", and that a fund would "create an additional source of investment income". Announcing the motion on 23 September, the Office of the Premier said a sovereign wealth fund is not intended to supplement ordinary spending in annual budgets and could sit alongside the National Disaster Fund, the Environmental Protection Fund and "the potential Newborn Investment Fund".

How the motion came to the House

The Premier moved the motion formally and then yielded the floor to Julie Hunter MP, Parliamentary Secretary for Financial Services and Commerce, telling Members that the work behind it "was primarily developed by the Parliamentary Secretary, Julie Hunter, the Member for West Bay West, in collaboration with a small working group". Several Members, including Deputy Leader of the Opposition Kenneth Bryan MP and Minister for Finance Rolston Anglin MP, explained that the motion could not stand in Mrs Hunter's own name because the Standing Orders do not allow a Parliamentary Secretary to bring a Private Member's Motion.

The Parliament Standing Orders, 2025, adopted by Members in February 2025 and in force from 28 February 2025, define a "Private Member" as "a Member who is not a Member of the Government nor a Parliamentary Secretary" and provide that Private Member's Business "shall consist of Motions and Bills proposed by Private Members". Mr Bryan asked that Hansard record Mrs Hunter as "the true author and champion" of the proposal. The Speaker noted that a committee had since been formed to consider amendments. In his closing remarks the Premier described the position as "a deficiency in the Standing Orders" and said the motion had been approved by Cabinet while he was away. The Office of the Premier told TCJ that Cabinet approved the tabling of the motion on 16 September 2026.

The case for the fund

Mrs Hunter told the House that a sovereign wealth fund was "a way of turning today's national wealth into tomorrow's financial security", and pointed to the funds of Singapore, China, Norway, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. She compared the proposal to the biblical account of Joseph, who stored grain in Egypt's years of plenty against the famine that followed. Drawing on more than 30 years in banking, she said she had seen people who had earned well for years arrive "at the doors of government with very little put aside", and that this was "not a story about character. It is a story about preparation."

Much of what the country now spends on social housing and social development could be traced in part to the absence of long-term national savings, she said, adding: "This is not a failure of our people." If the fund did no more than establish "a culture of savings and long-term financial planning at the national level", it would have served a worthwhile purpose.

On governance, she said the question of who could withdraw money from the fund had to be answered clearly. "This is not a fund that any government can dip into whenever it wants," she said. "The real test of this fund is whether the rules can withstand pressure, not just from future governments, but from us sitting here today." She added: "We are not creating this fund for the government of today. We are creating it for the country of tomorrow."

Mrs Hunter was equally clear about the limits of the motion. "No money moves as a result of this motion and the investment strategy has yet to be determined," she said. If the House agreed, a working group with expertise in sovereign wealth funds would consider the fund's purpose, funding, governance, legal structure and investment framework, and the circumstances in which money could ever be withdrawn, before the Government brought legislation to Parliament. "This motion is not the end of the process," she said. "It is the beginning of it."

The Opposition's support and its request

Roy McTaggart MP, the Opposition Member for George Town East, said that "we in official Opposition support the motion". He told Members, however, that Cayman had in effect operated funds of this kind for years, naming the Environmental Protection Fund, which he said is financed by departure taxes; the National Disaster Fund, which he said receives CI$400,000 a year; and an infrastructure fund financed by planning fees. Those balances, he said, are held in fixed deposits at the Treasury and need tighter rules and a committee to oversee their investment.

The official position was set out in a written answer that the Minister for Finance gave Mr Bryan on 1 October, four days before the debate. At 31 August 2026 the Government's bank balances stood at CI$489.4 million, of which CI$194.0 million were "Restricted and Reserve" balances comprising the General Reserves, the National Disaster Fund, the Infrastructure Development Fund and the Environmental Protection Fund. The uncommitted balance of the National Disaster Fund was CI$2.9 million, and the annual payment of CI$400,000 into it had been maintained. The Office of the Premier told TCJ that at the same date the Environmental Protection Fund stood at CI$28.8 million and the Infrastructure Development Fund at CI$34.6 million. The same answer recorded an operating surplus of CI$175.3 million for the eight months to 31 August and no new borrowing in 2026.

Mr Bryan, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and Member for George Town Central, said the existing funds already carry statutory limits on their use and the new fund would need its own protective rules. He said the Opposition stood ready to work with the Government on the policy and legislation, and formally requested that an Opposition appointment be made to the working group. He would have preferred the motion to include a timeline and hoped money could flow to the fund from 1 January 2028 under the 2028/29 budget.

Dwayne Seymour MP, the Member for Bodden Town East, said the principle matched his own April motion for a newborn investment fund, accepted by the Government on 30 April in modified form as a retirement-only Caymanian Baby Bond: "Save today, invest wisely, and build something of lasting value for tomorrow." The fund would need independent governance, clear investment parameters and regular public reporting, he said, and "must not become another government bank account".

Seed money, not a new bureaucracy

Mr Anglin urged Members to "temper expectations". The public should not be led to expect "hundreds of millions of dollars" in the fund within two or three years, he said; what mattered was seed capital and an early start. Such funds take different forms elsewhere, he said, and "there is no one definition, one size fits all"; it would be for the working group to recommend a model. Whatever the model, "savings has to be intentional".

He said he would not support the creation of a new bureaucracy with its own managing director, deputy, chief financial officer and head of human resources, which "would eat up the wealth that we're looking to try to create". He suggested instead that the Government look first to the Public Service Pensions Board, which already administers the public service, parliamentary and judicial pension plans and has, he said, a proven record with its investment committee and fund managers, while noting that the Board's governing law would need to be amended. He also said keeping the Environmental Protection Fund on bank deposit rather than in a conservative investment fund had carried a significant opportunity cost.

Funding ideas and an ageing population

Christopher Saunders MP, the Independent Member of the Opposition for Bodden Town West, said Cayman had missed the chance to save during the years of record financial services surpluses and that it was better to begin late than not at all. He proposed possible sources of funding for the working group to consider: the margin that banks earn on the fixed exchange rate between the Cayman and U.S. dollars, dormant bank accounts, dormant pension accounts, and the charitable residues of special purpose vehicles wound up in the financial services industry. He said that between 10,000 and 14,000 Caymanians would reach the age of 65 within the next 10 to 14 years, and that the Government's long-term unfunded healthcare liability was a problem the fund might help to address.

Mr Saunders noted that Norway's petroleum fund was established in 1990 and received its first payment in 1996, dates confirmed by Norges Bank Investment Management's record, and urged Cayman to do better with a first deposit of even CI$500,000 in the next budget. "We're not going to be remembered for what we inherited," Mr Saunders said. "We're going to be remembered for what we leave behind."

Wayne Panton MP, the Member for Newlands, a Parliamentary Secretary and a former Premier, disagreed with Mr McTaggart's description of the existing funds as sovereign wealth funds, calling them "mechanisms to create money to put aside" rather than structures built to invest. He described the proposal as "a macroeconomic insurance policy for this country", and said that Cayman's low debt and strong credit rating could not be assumed to last. He agreed that the Public Service Pensions Board offered a way to begin, but said the fund's governance would have to be "completely watertight" and independent of politicians, and referred Members to the Santiago Principles, the international governance standard for sovereign wealth funds.

The Premier's reply

Closing the debate, the Premier said the Alaska Permanent Fund had begun in 1977 with US$734,000 and had grown to about US$92 billion by June 2026, "if our research is correct". The Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation records a first deposit of US$734,000 on 28 February 1977 and an audited fund balance of US$91.9 billion at 30 June 2026. There was, he said, enough wealth flowing through Cayman's transactions and vehicles to set some aside for the benefit of its people.

What Cayman had lacked, he said, was "an overarching umbrella fund that pulls it all together with an investment strategy". Cayman, with more than 31,000 investment funds registered with the Monetary Authority (31,145 at 30 June 2026 on the Authority's own statistics), had "all the legislation, all the talent, all the expertise" to run a fund of its own. Such a fund, he said, could eventually pay for needs the annual budget never reaches, such as housing repairs.

He said the working group would not be "cumbersome", that it would begin by examining "revenue streams that we haven't touched yet" rather than existing fees, and he invited the Opposition, Mr Saunders and Mr Seymour to put forward names, saying: "this needs to be a countrywide effort". The Speaker then put the question and the motion passed.

The House adjourned sine die after the sitting and is expected to reconvene in November.

What the Premier's office says happens next

TCJ emailed the Office of the Premier on 7 October with questions on the working group's membership, chair and budget, the date of Cabinet's approval, the Government's timeline for a first appropriation, whether the Public Service Pensions Board is under consideration to manage the fund, the untouched revenue streams the Premier referred to, and the current balances of the Environmental Protection Fund and the Infrastructure Development Fund.

In a response received on 12 October, the office said the motion "supports the establishment of a Cayman Islands Sovereign Wealth Fund in principle; it does not create the fund", and that "the details of how a fund would be financed, structured, governed and managed, and how any returns would be used, will be considered by the working group that the motion provides for". Many of TCJ's questions, "including possible revenue sources, which entity would manage a fund, and whether legislation will be needed, are exactly the questions that group will consider before a proposal is brought to Parliament", it said. "Contributions to a fund would follow once a framework is in place."

On membership, the office said: "The invitation to the Opposition and independent Members to put forward names still stands. The working group will be structured to enable cross-parliamentary participation alongside the right technical expertise. Membership will be announced in due course." The office did not say when the group would be appointed, who would chair it or what it would cost.

TCJ also emailed the Office of the Leader of the Opposition on 7 October asking whether the Opposition has nominated a member to the working group and what conditions it would attach to the fund's governance, funding and withdrawal rules. It had not replied by the time of publication.