The easiest country to open an Offshore bank account (in 2023)

Summary

In this video, the host discusses the ease of opening an offshore bank account in Lithuania in 2020, highlighting its advantages such as a straightforward KYC process, remote account opening, and suitability for various business scenarios including crypto businesses. The rise of Electronic Money Institutions (EMIs) in Lithuania, which act as digital layers on top of traditional banks, is explained. These EMIs offer a regulated environment with a lower cost of entry and a more modern technological experience. However, the host advises caution, suggesting that while these accounts can be useful for specific purposes, they may not be ideal for large sums due to potential compliance issues and the risk of service shutdowns. The video also compares Lithuania to other jurisdictions like Belize and Nevis, noting the stability and quality of service advantages of the former.

Takeaways

• 🏦 The easiest country to open an offshore bank account in 2020 is Lithuania due to its streamlined KYC process and digital banking infrastructure.
• 📈 Lithuania stands out with its Electronic Money Institutions (EMIs), which are virtual banks offering a digital layer on top of traditional banking services.
• 💻 The digital front-end and fee structures in Lithuania are managed by a separate company, allowing for a more modern and cost-effective banking experience.
• 💰 The regulatory environment in Lithuania is favorable for digital financial institutions, with low capital requirements and a competitive landscape.
• 🔒 Lithuania's system is highly regulated, offering a service-based approach to compliance, including AML and KYC checks as services.
• 🚫 Despite the ease of opening an account, the speaker does not recommend keeping large sums of money in these accounts due to potential compliance issues.
• 💵 The accounts are suitable for transactional banking with low fees, but may not be cost-effective for large wire transfers due to sometimes high fees.
• 🚫 There are limitations on the currencies and payment networks that can be accessed, often restricted to euros and possibly SEPA, with limited access to SWIFT, Visa, and Mastercard.
• ⚖️ Compliance can be a double-edged sword; while it can be burdensome, it also protects against bad actors and potential institutional collapse.
• 🌐 Technology used in Lithuanian banks is generally more modern, providing a better user experience compared to some Caribbean banks.
• ☎️ For assistance with setting up bank accounts or related services, the speaker offers to book a call through clarity.fm4rosmer or visit the provided websites.

Q & A

What is the easiest country to open an offshore bank account in 2020 according to the video?

Lithuania is mentioned as the easiest country to open an offshore bank account in 2020 due to its streamlined KYC processes, digital banking infrastructure, and the presence of Electronic Money Institutions (EMIs).

What are Electronic Money Institutions (EMIs) in Lithuania?

EMIs in Lithuania are virtual banks that provide a digital layer on top of an actual bank, typically the Bank of Lithuania. They are highly regulated and offer a digital front end with a negotiable fee structure.

Why are EMIs popular in Lithuania?

EMIs are popular in Lithuania because obtaining an EMI license is relatively cheap and easy. They also offer a regulatory environment that is more accommodating to digital financial services and allow for the outsourcing of regulatory compliance.

How does the regulatory environment in Lithuania benefit those looking to open offshore bank accounts?

The regulatory environment in Lithuania benefits offshore bank account seekers by offering a more relaxed regulatory stack that is built into services and can be outsourced, reducing the need for individual companies to build their own compliance teams.

What are the typical limitations of EMIs in terms of currency and payment networks?

EMIs often have limitations regarding the currencies they can accept, typically euros. They may also have restricted access to payment networks, such as not being able to access SWIFT or having limited access to SEPA, and potentially no access to Visa and Mastercard for issuing cards.

What is the speaker's recommendation regarding the amount of money to keep in an offshore bank account in Lithuania?

The speaker does not recommend keeping a large amount of money in an offshore bank account in Lithuania due to potential risks associated with compliance and AML issues. He suggests that it's better suited for transactional banking with low fees.

Why are fees often high in digital financial institutions?

Fees can be high in digital financial institutions because sometimes they charge a percentage of a wire transfer, which can become costly with large transactions. However, they might be more cost-effective for small transactions.

What are the advantages of opening an offshore bank account in Lithuania over places like Belize or Nevis?

Lithuania offers more stability due to its less reliance on correspondent banking relationships, better technology, and a higher degree of compliance. Additionally, the quality of service is generally higher compared to some Caribbean banks.

What is the term used for the practice of white labeling bank software?

White labeling bank software refers to the process where a company uses another company's software and puts its own brand on it, avoiding the need to develop the software from scratch and go through the compliance and validation process.

Why might the ease of opening an offshore bank account in Lithuania be a cause for concern?

The ease of opening an account might be a cause for concern because it could indicate a ticking time bomb for potential AML or compliance issues, which could lead to services being shut down and the need for re-evaluation and restructuring.

What are some of the services that the speaker's company offers?

The speaker's company offers assistance with setting up bank accounts, international tax structuring, asset protection, payment processing, high-risk merchant accounts, and residency and citizenship services.

How can viewers get in touch with the speaker for assistance with setting up bank accounts or other services?

Viewers can book a call with the speaker at clarity.fm/4rosmer, which is provided in the video description, or they can visit the websites offshorecitizen.net and offshorecapitalist.com for more information and assistance.

Outlines

00:00

🌐 Easiest Country for Offshore Banking in 2020

Michael from Offshore Citizen discusses the ease of opening an offshore bank account in 2020, highlighting Lithuania as the standout country. He explains that Lithuania's appeal lies in its electronic money institutions (EMIs), which are virtual banks that provide a digital interface to the traditional banking system. These EMIs are highly regulated and offer a cost-effective way to set up, with services like AML and KYC checks available on a pay-per-use basis. However, Michael advises caution, warning that the ease of setup could be a red flag for future compliance issues. He suggests that while Lithuania is good for quick and easy account opening, it may not be the best place for large deposits due to potential risks.

05:02

💡 Recommendations for Offshore Banking Use Cases

The speaker provides recommendations on how to use offshore banking institutions, particularly those in Lithuania. He suggests that these banks are suitable for transactional banking with low fees but warns against keeping large sums of money in them due to the potential for high fees on large transactions. Michael also compares Lithuania favorably to other offshore banking options like Belize and Nevis, noting that the latter may be more stable and offer better technology and customer service. He advises viewers to be selective when choosing an institution and to reach out for assistance if needed, providing a link for booking a call for further guidance.

Keywords

💡Offshore Bank Account

An offshore bank account is a bank account you hold outside your country of residence. In the context of the video, it refers to the ease and benefits of opening such an account in Lithuania, which is highlighted as the easiest place to do so in 2020 due to its regulatory environment and digital banking services.

💡Electronic Money Institutions (EMIs)

EMIs are virtual banks that provide a digital layer on top of an actual bank, typically managed by the central bank. They are a key component in Lithuania's banking system and are central to the ease of opening offshore accounts. The video mentions that these institutions offer a regulated yet flexible platform for managing funds, which is attractive to businesses and individuals looking for digital banking solutions.

💡KYC (Know Your Customer)

KYC is a process used by financial institutions to verify the identity of their clients to prevent fraud, money laundering, and other illegal activities. The video emphasizes that KYC processes in Lithuania are efficient, allowing for easy and quick account setups, which is a significant factor in making the country a preferred destination for offshore banking.

💡Regulatory Environment

The regulatory environment refers to the rules and regulations governing financial institutions. The video discusses how Lithuania's regulatory environment is conducive to the growth of digital financial institutions, making it easier for businesses to operate and for individuals to open offshore accounts.

💡Capital Requirements

Capital requirements are the minimum amount of funds that a financial institution must hold in reserve. The video mentions that the capital requirements for EMIs in Lithuania are typically lower, which makes it more accessible for businesses to establish themselves in the country's financial sector.

💡White Label Banking Software

White label banking software refers to a pre-developed banking platform that companies can customize and rebrand as their own. The video explains that using such software allows new financial institutions to avoid the complexities of developing their own systems and can comply with existing regulations, making the process of setting up a bank more straightforward.

💡Compliance Issues

Compliance issues arise when a financial institution fails to meet the legal and regulatory requirements. The video warns that the ease of setting up an offshore bank account in Lithuania could be a ticking time bomb for compliance issues, which could lead to shutdowns and the need for reevaluation of the institution's practices.

💡Transaction Fees

Transaction fees are the charges made by financial institutions for processing transactions. The video discusses that while small transactions might be cost-effective through Lithuanian EMIs, larger transactions could incur high fees, making it less desirable for certain types of banking activities.

💡Correspondent Banking

Correspondent banking is a relationship between banks where one bank provides services on behalf of another. The video contrasts the stability of correspondent banking in Lithuania with the potential risks faced by banks in places like Belize, which are more dependent on these relationships and could face challenges if they are lost.

💡Regulation as a Service

Regulation as a service refers to the outsourcing of regulatory compliance functions to third-party providers. The video explains that in Lithuania, regulatory compliance has been streamlined into microservices that can be easily integrated into a business's operations, reducing the burden of compliance and allowing for faster establishment of financial institutions.

💡Cryptography Businesses

Cryptography businesses involve the use of cryptographic techniques to secure communications and data. The video suggests that Lithuania is open to crypto businesses, allowing them to open accounts and operate within its regulatory framework, which is a significant draw for businesses in this sector.

Highlights

Lithuania stands out as the easiest country to open an offshore bank account in 2020 due to its user-friendly and efficient processes.

Electronic Money Institutions (EMIs) in Lithuania act as virtual banks providing a digital layer on top of actual banks, offering a highly regulated environment.

EMIs in Lithuania are attractive due to the low cost of obtaining an electronic money institution license.

The regulatory environment in Lithuania has become easier, fostering competition and the growth of digital financial institutions.

Regulatory compliance in Lithuania is built into services, allowing for outsourcing and easier setup for financial institutions.

Capital requirements for setting up an EMI in Lithuania are typically lower, making it more accessible.

Lithuanian EMIs allow for white-label banking software, reducing the need for individual compliance and validation processes.

There are limitations on currencies and payment networks that can be accessed through Lithuanian EMIs, typically focusing on euros and SEPA.

The presenter does not recommend keeping large sums of money in Lithuanian EMIs due to potential compliance and AML issues.

Lithuania is a good option for transactional banking with low fees, but may not be cost-effective for large wire transfers.

Compared to Belize or Nevis, Lithuania offers more stability due to less reliance on correspondent banking relationships.

The technology used by Lithuanian financial institutions is more modern, providing a better user experience.

The quality of service in Lithuania is generally higher than in some Caribbean countries, which may have a more laid-back work culture.

There are many EMIs in Lithuania, with varying quality, so it's important to choose the best ones for specific needs.

For those looking to set up bank accounts or needing assistance with international financial matters, the presenter offers help through his website.

The presenter's websites, offshorecitizen.net and offshorecapitalist.com, provide resources on international tax structuring, asset protection, and more.

Transcripts

[Music]

welcome back everyone michael here with

offshore citizen today we're going to

talk about the

easiest country to open an offshore bank

account

in 2020 so stay tuned if you have not

already subscribed

please smash display obliterate

attack the subscribe button and click

the notification bell to be updated of

any future videos we try and share them

several times a week lots of good

information and look forward to hearing

you

as participating in that with us so okay

best places to open

an offshore or easiest rather places to

open an offshore bank account

in 2020 this is a little bit of a tricky

question because

you can get into nuances of okay where

are you from

where is your business from etc but

there's

one country that for a variety of

reasons has come to stand out as the

easiest place

going for opening an offshore bank

account

and what i mean by this is that not only

is it super easy you could just you can

often get an account very quickly you

can

go through kyc easily etc you can do it

remotely

you can do it potentially for crypto

businesses you can do it you know

virtually almost every scenario that

would be hard to do

can be achieved in this and achieved

relatively easily

is lithuania okay so what's happened in

lithuania

uh there's something called emis

electronic money institutions which are

essentially

uh virtual banks that are providing a

digital layer on top of an actual bank

typically the bank

central bank of lithuania in this case

okay what does that mean

what that means is that your funds are

stored

in a normal bank right but that they

are uh sort of custodied managed etc

by a electronic money institution okay

so it's highly regulated and all this

kind of stuff

okay great but the digital front end

the experience that you have the fee

structure etc

is all negotiated through uh some other

company

and this has become very popular in

lithuania why

because getting electronic money

institution licenses in lithuania is

super cheap

okay so it's quite cheap and easy to set

up now the reality is the trend in the

world today

is there are a lot more digital

financial institutions opening up and

there will continue to be

and there's a few different reasons for

that one is the regulatory environment

has become

much easier they've introduced a lot

more competition by bringing in these

electronic money institutions

second of all because the regulatory

stack

is more or less being built into

services

and can kind of be outsourced so if

you're familiar at all with the way that

technology development works you often

have micro services that are built and

then you can pay to have access to those

microservices for your applications

you don't have to build everything

yourself they've kind of done the same

thing here

where they've built regulation as a

service and so

companies will come in and they say oh

aml kyc checks

no problems we can provide you that as a

service we're going to charge you

x dollars per instance and you don't

have to have your own aml team

perfect that was really easy right and

there's this whole stack of regulatory

uh pieces that have all been bundled up

into these little micro services you can

plug in and so it allows you to start

a financial institution like that really

quickly and easily

uh the capital requirements required for

these are typically a lot lower so

that's another thing

and then the last part is the technology

is more or less the same as what i

mentioned before

you can white label bank software

essentially so you don't have to go and

develop it all yourself you don't have

to go through

the difficult process of maybe obtaining

uh compliance and validation because

it's already been done by someone and

you're just taking their software

and putting it as an overlay on top of

theirs there's of course restrictions on

that

and you know flexibility etc but that's

pretty useful

now generally speaking when we're

talking about those types of

institutions

often there's limitations in terms of

what currencies they can accept

typically we're talking about euros

uh often the payment networks you can

access maybe you can't access swift

maybe you can only access sepa

things like that you may not have access

to visa and mastercard

uh certainly not from the perspective of

being able to easily issue cards

uh again that's something that people

are white labeling and offering out so

you know you're building these

institutions that they just bring all

this stuff together and then they put a

marketing layer on the front right so

the bottom line of that is look if

you're in a situation today where

you have a tough to crack case or you

need to open an account quickly etc

you know the easiest place to go is

lithuania now

do i recommend you put a lot of money

there no typically i do not typically i

think it's a bad idea

i don't really trust it there's a bunch

of reasons that i don't trust it

what you're going to notice is that when

things are too easy

this is a ticking time bomb for some

sort of aml

issue some sort of compliance issue

which is going to result in

having things shut down and we've seen

this who was it recently anyway there

have been a couple of them

over the last couple years or whatever

that i've seen

where they haven't necessarily gone

under

but they've kind of had a big issue

where all of a sudden their services are

shut down

and they have to go through kind of a re

tweaking everything to get themselves

properly sorted out

uh sorted out etc and kind of going from

there so my general recommendation with

those institutions is

they can be very useful for certain use

cases

i would not use a lot of money there i

certainly wouldn't want to keep you know

tens of millions of dollars

in those accounts in fact i wouldn't

keep seven figures in there personally

uh generally i think they're good for

you know when you're doing transactional

banking in and out

if you can keep the fees low now this is

the next thing that's a problem is very

often the fees are quite high on these

sometimes you're paying a percentage of

a wire and if you're doing large wires

it's not

really very cost effective but if you're

talking about just

small transactions uh as something that

you're

navigating elsewhere i think it's a

reasonably decent option so anyway

that for what it's worth is kind of the

place that i would look i would

look there over some place like belize

uh the reasons for that

you know so if we look at belize you

look at nevis a bunch of the banks that

i call shitbanks that i tell you just

don't go there

why would i go and look at say lithuania

first well

first of all because those are typically

dependent on correspondent banking

relationships that they're going to

be in grave danger of losing okay and

so you have a little bit more stability

in terms of if you're operating in euros

you're doing a sepa etc that's going to

give you a little bit

more stability in terms of the

likelihood that they can lose that stuff

and also the degree of compliance that

you have to go through now the

compliance is double edged sword right

the compliance on the one hand

can be a pain in the ass on the other

hand it also protects you

from having a bunch of bad actors in

there who it kind of tends to corrupt

the

uh profit incentives of the import or

institution

and then ultimately results in kind of

an implosion or explosion depending on

how you want to look at it

so from that standpoint you have an

advantage there

second of all generally the technology

that they're using is better

it's just kind of a more modern

experience and so that can

also be fairly useful i also find

that the quality of service that you're

going to get is generally

higher there's just kind of this

caribbean

what would i call it like a caribbean

kind of work culture

that tends to result in fairly low

inaccessible customer service as

compared with what you can get with some

of these now

be aware there's like i don't know a

couple hundred of them there's a lot of

these different institutions right so

you know they are not all equal by any

stretch some are better than others some

are far worse

you know and so you want to kind of try

and pick the best ones but

generally speaking you have some good

opportunities to be able to make things

uh work out in that regard so i hope

that helps that gives you some idea

please if you enjoyed the video click

the like button uh subscribe

click the notification bell to get

updated if you would like some

assistance with setting up bank accounts

etc reach out to us

you can uh book a call with me at

clarity.fm4rosmer which is in the link

below

you can also go and reach out and check

out our website offshorecitizen.net

offshorecapitalist.com

anything to do with you know

international tax structuring asset

protection

payment processing high risk merchant

accounts

residency citizenships etc reach out to

us i will see you guys on the next video