Monday, February 8, 2010

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Netting the wealth By Scott Armstrong ~ Guardian Business Editor ~ scott@nasguard.com: A new immigration policy designed to attract the rich and the super rich to The Bahamas is the latest move designed to make this nation the place of choice for the world's wealthiest - bringing thousands of jobs and billions in revenue with them. The Nassau Guardian revealed recently how an in-depth report identified a huge opportunity in wealth management for The Bahamas if it strategically targeted high-net clients - those with $1 million to $10 million to invest - and ultra high-net clients - those with more than $10 million to invest. The report, by respected consultancy the Scorpio Partnership and launched at the BFSB's International Business & Finance Summit, revealed that by targeting those individuals The Bahamas could attract $542 billion in assets, representing $5.4 billion in revenue and requiring thousands of professionals to service that market by 2013. Sebastian Dovey, managing partner of Scorpio said: "While there are other competing jurisdictions seeking to tap this potential revenue and job creation, should The Bahamas secure its fair share of this opportunity, the investment would be worthwhile." Scorpio also called for The Bahamas to adopt a strategic approach called SCRIPT, and in line with that thinking, the government has already begun talks to streamline the immigration process for exactly those kind of wealthy clients. Speaking at the summit, Deputy Prime Minister Brent Symonette said he had held a "successful meeting" within the government - at the behest of the BFSB - about updating the immigration process for high net worth, and ultra-high net worth, individuals. He said: "We are trying to put in place services and facilities that make it easier to do business. "We are working to finalize a change and update to the immigration policy so that we can facilitate on a quick basis persons for economic permanent residency. "We talked about how do with define as a high net worth individual, what level do we cap that at, what level do we start at so that we can have the ultra-high net worth individuals have a very fast-track into the economic or permanent residency, whatever their requirements are. "Many of these people are known to us, they are either here on a work permit, they are here on approved investor status, or they have been a long-term visitor to The Bahamas. "In those cases we are talking about using existing regulatory organizations, such as Central Bank and use their requirements so that persons don't have to apply to the Central Bank, whether it is the Investment Board, or another regulatory authority, and then come into Immigration, or another organization, and produce the same set of documents for another agency of the government. "We could accept from either Central Bank, or Investment Board, or whichever entity of government it is, their recommendations on a person and fast-track. "We've been very successful in working in that area, I think hopefully very soon we will be able to announce a dynamic change in the policy." The SCRIPT concept was proposed by Sebastian Dovey of Scorpio and it stands for: Strategic vision; Co-ordination; Infrastructure; Regulation; Proactive; Talent - the measures The Bahamas needs to adopt to attract that $542 billion wealth management market. In line with those ideals, the Deputy Prime Minister also told delegates that the government was also looking at streamlining the process for high-net worth and ultra-high net worth clients coming to The Bahamas for the first time seeking economic residency. He said: "The other side of the coin is where we have new applicants for economic residency who we don't know about, coming into the system for the first time. "The normal procedure is for police record to be supplied, some sort of home ownership, making sure taxes are up to date etc - we want to provide another way. "We are looking at the fact that in many countries a police record becomes a large problem because certain countries either aren't issuing them, or they are taking a long time to be issued. "We have to find a system that gets round that, the other area we are looking at is to find a way that a person closing on a property lot feels quite comfortable with their purchase, and not have to wait at the tail end to receive some sort of permanent residency. We could do some sort of approval in principal so that as the construction goes through they have met the qualifications." The Deputy Prime Minister also said the meeting discussed taking the immigration process online so that individuals could submit their application on the internet. He said: "The government of The Bahamas is committed to enhancing the financial services industry." Monday February 08, 2010