Offshore Banking – What Are The Benefits?
Some of the best tourist destinations of the world also offer offshore banking opportunities. There is more. There was a time when Switzerland was the world leader in offshore banking but today the market has widened & opened up. Some of the islands in the Caribbean’s offer offshore banking opportunities; Panama & Belize in South America are also hot spots for offshore banking. One may wonder why go so far off to do banking? Offshore banking is a small part of the bigger & broader wealth management market. There’re certain advantages of offshore banking that makes it a lucrative & economically viable option.
What offshore banking really offers is Security, Privacy & a tax shelter. Banking offshore can be accomplished by individual persons as well as corporations. There is more. The best way to select the country for banking is by getting information about its economy & asset protection laws. Most of the offshore banking countries provide a strong asset protection law under which no one can get any information about your assets or investments. There is more. There’re times when you really need to hide your assets & money from lawyers & other people who claim a stake in your assets. In such a scenario they will require proof of your existing wealth, which when kept in an offshore bank will not actually be on records for people to see.
The assets that you have domestically can be subject to bad
to worse political & social factors & these are the ones that you can not really control. So if your asset is under protection from offshore banks then they will not actually be affected by these factors.
Some of the other advantages include tax shelter. A country with a good economy will offer you tax shelter if you open an account in their country. There will not actually be any taxes unless you’re running a business there. And so… Some of the facilities provided by these banks are equivalent to actually having an account in your home country. You can have an ATM card to withdraw money… You can wire transfer to & from anywhere in the world & in any currency. As a corporation this is an very good feature because if your company is based in the US & you’re doing business in Europe then having a Swiss bank account makes a lot of economic sense.
There is a strong code of secrecy followed by these banks to protect your account. In Switzerland for example, the banks do not employ people who can not follow their confidentiality code. Moreover, all employees have to sign a document stating this code of confidentiality & it’s a mandatory employment requirement. The bottom line is that your money is in safe hands & you can imagine how strict these codes of conduct are. Another major advantage is for increasing savings. Now you may ask that the same is possible in your home country too. But then how many people are actually able to save money in their bank accounts. There is more. There is always a reason to withdraw money & there’re always unexpected expenses. There is more. The good thing about keeping your money in offshore banks is that you would not want to withdraw them whenever you choose. It’s like a fixed deposit & you can let it accumulate interest.
There was a time when offshore banking was the domain of the rich & the famous but today the scenario has changed considerably. People from any background or segment can open an account in an offshore bank. The only drawback as seen by individual persons is the amount of money required to open an account, which is mostly on the higher side. Although, the deposit amount varies from bank to bank & country to country. Offshore banking isn’t just an option or opportunity, it’s the speediest & one of the most popular investment tools in the world today.
Simon is a leading expert in Offshore Banking & Offshore Incorporations. He owns a company dedicated to helping people set up affordable & watertight offshore banking & business solutions. You can find out more about the services he offers at PriorTaxpayer.com
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Leave a Reply