Selecting The Right Bank To Enhance Investments, Privacy And Financial Security

By Jonathan Curshen

2005

As we move closer to a global economy, there is a trend among smaller, less economically developed countries to follow Switzerland's lead to legislate measures to attract foreign investment money to their economy. As a result new financial opportunities are opening to those who are willing to take advantage of them.

The global economy is experiencing exponential growth because of the Internet. The ease and fluidness of account access through the Internet has made it possible to seamlessly bank both and invest domestically and offshore: move funds, check balances, write e-checks, make payments, transfer money between accounts, and purchase investment options. Offshore banking is now competing successfully with domestic financial institutions.

There is no real mystery to offshore banks: they provide the same services as do domestic banks, just not inside USA boundaries which is why they are referred to as "offshore." Often times they are either affiliated with or are subsidiaries of a domestic bank that you may already be doing business with.

Choosing an offshore bank:

The first step in deciding which offshore bank will best meet your needs is to determine your objectives. This means a straight look at assessing your needs. In order to talk intelligently about why you want to open an offshore bank account, you must first decide exactly what your objectives are.

There are six primary benefits of opening an offshore account. First it increases the level of privacy you have concerning your financial matters. Second, it offers you investing options that are not available to you in your native country. Third, your financial security is greatly increased due to the international diversification of your portfolio. Fourth, your assets are safer through the secret nature and absolute privacy of offshore banks and the inability of people who would threaten your wealth to find or even know of its existence. Last, having funds offshore makes recovery of assets through lawsuits or seizures much more difficult - often impossible, as the laws of small tax-sheltering nations protect the wealth of their offshore clientele greatly and dramatically favor the individual investor.

You receive all these benefits automatically by opening an offshore account. Deciding which benefit is most important to you and how you want to use the account will determine the type of account, at which bank, and in what jurisdiction.

Privacy

If your primary objective is privacy, then the most important consideration is the jurisdiction, or country, where the bank is operating. The only way that you can be assured that your records are truly private is to bank in a jurisdiction that imposes and enforces the strongest banking privacy laws. The countries of Austria, Panama and St. Kitts and Nevis, are our recommendation to fulfill this as your primary objective - these nations do not fold under due to outside pressures. In fact, revealing banking information to third parties is a crime in Panama, punishable by imprisonment.

If one of your objectives in using an offshore bank is financial privacy you need to be careful of banks that may have reporting requirements in your country due to such an affiliation.

My firm has done extensive research in this area and can provide you with a list of jurisdictions that have the strongest banking and corporate privacy laws in the world. To receive this information free of charge, please drop me a note requesting our 2005 research paper "A listing of countries offering the most favorable and strongest banking privacy laws."

Investing and Business

If investing and doing business from an offshore account is your primary objective then you will want a bank that offers higher rates of return on savings accounts, provides brokerage and investment services, deals in multiple currencies, and has merchant payment abilities.

There are advantages to having accounts in foreign currencies. If...