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Offshore Corporate Service Agents
Who Are They?
Offshore corporate service agents are licensed professionals (lawyers, financial accountants, business managers , estate planners, brokers and investment managers, insurers, bankers) that are involved in providing one form of offshore corporate service or another.
Regulations
Offshore corporate service agents are required to be licensed at all times. Most offshore havens require that licenses be renewed every year with the corresponding fees paid either to the government or necessary financial services commission. For many reasons which are both practical and legal, offshore corporate service agents are required to be residents of the jurisdiction for which incorporation is being offered (further details are explained in the following section). This is to ensure that information about the company and its members are physically file and stored in the jurisdictions itself. Offshore corporate services are not just provided, and offshore companies are not just formed and let off to go about their business. Well, they are, but, offshore corporate service agents must be able to contact their customer whenever necessary and vice versa. One of the regulations that offshore corporate service agents must adhere to concerns joining the battle to fight money laundering and other forms of financial crimes that corporations or individuals may be looking to engage in. These ills are not offshore related alone since they happen everywhere and everyday around the world. Offshore corporate service agents are required to enforce due diligence measures to ensure that a customer qualifies for a particular offshore service. These range from requesting and obtaining acceptable identification documents such as passport copies, reference letters (for example for an offshore bank account) and utility or recent credit card statements that are reliable proof of address, to more complex investigative measures for performing background checks for services such as economic citizenship.
How Do Offshore Corporate Service Agents Operate?
It is normal to see offshore corporate service agents provide offshore company, banking and investment services in other jurisdictions in providing a broad line of offshore corporate services and a wide choice of offshore jurisdictions to choose from. This is achieved either by these offshore corporation service agents establishing offices in other jurisdictions so that their services can be customized and more efficiency is obtained in delivering services to customers or by working closely with other offshore corporate service agents that are located in other jurisdiction. This means that offshore corporate service agents from around the globe work very closely together as this helps to keep costs down and ensure that customers can be provided with the services, attention and jurisdiction that they want. For example, a customer located in the United States who wants to bank in Cyprus or a company that wants to incorporate in the Caribbean can best served by finding an agent in within his region who has links with an offshore bank in Cyprus or in the Caribbean, although of course, direct contact could be made if possible. But, being in the US and incorporating and banking offshore in Switzerland is way more convenient by going through an offshore corporate service agent who simply just receives the customer’s request and gets to work. The customer’s only duty is to state what is wanted, pay and collect when documents are delivered by the courier service.
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