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Guide to Essential Money Tools
Banking Tools
Firm financial foundations
Expats must ensure their financial base is both flexible and adequately supported during times of uncertainty and political volatility. Wherever you are in the world, knowing how to mobilise your assets effectively and safely is considered nothing short of essential by financial advisers and managers. This preparation of money movement – often referred to as a flight to quality – means expats should be asking themselves the following questions:
- how safe is the jurisdiction in which my wealth is based?
- how safe are the key investment vehicles my money is placed in?
- how can I insure against capital loss?
Around the world there are well over 70 offshore finance centres. Essentially, ‘offshore’ in today’s terminology refers to both the overall low taxation status of these centres and their particular legislative framework that encourages and facilitates their use by international finance companies.
These cater for investors of all nationalities and provide between them the widest range of financial services and products. Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man are three centres which have earned an internationally recognised standard of world-class financial practice by putting in place a level of regulation and supervision which commands universal respect from public bodies and private investors alike.
What expats most need is the certainty that the legislation, regulation and supervision of their offshore finance sector is rigorous enough to ensure that their money is safe. The international reputation of a jurisdiction will indicate how its regulating authorities are viewed by their international peers – a useful litmus test when it comes to judging how careful the banks situated within that jurisdiction will be with your money.
Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man fulfil all the essential criteria and have found ways to balance the all- important guarantees of privacy and confidentiality with the understandable need to co-operate fully with the various international anti-money laundering bodies.
Know Your Customer (KYC) rules, which these three centres adhere to strictly, are there to protect both sides, the finance company and the private individual.