Articles
Captive Insurance – What is it really?
Captive Insurance is esoteric and has a reputation of being boring. Many of the fundamental reasons for utilising a captive are plain vanilla but the ability to build up offshore, off balance sheet asset bases is compelling to many. The more that governments attempt...
Offshore in South America
The South American region has traditionally been a big user of offshore financial services. This is because of the regional investment hub in Miami but also for security and stability reasons. We review the ways in which such relationships tend to operate and the...
Offshore Jurisdictions – What’s the Difference
The choice of location for company formation tends to be determined according one (or more) of five factors: Laws, Tax, Proximity, Providers and Cost. The specific nature of each jurisdiction points towards competitive advantages in geographical operation or product...
Why Does Offshore Exist
The offshore world has largely cleaned itself up and increasingly provides legitimate value-add to clients in the areas of risk-mitigation, political stability, anonymity and security. The image of tax-havens facilitating large-scale tax evasion is outdated and has...
Offshore and Data Opacity
The lack of transparency benefits the service providers and service users and so will likely continue on regardless of international attempts to reduce it. Our Case Study shows how data provided by individual firms and jurisdictions can be systematically misleading. A...
Gold: A Cultural Perspective
Psychological viewpoints on precious metals are often determined by the culture a person comes from - Chinese, Indian and Turkish peoples have a long history with precious metals. We use cultural affinity, perceptions of economic/political stability and wealth levels...