New Economic Investment Certificate policy

This article is not intended to be relied on as legal advice. Please seek formal advice to check the accuracy and continued relevance of the below, and whether it would be suitable to your circumstances.

The Bermuda government has recently announced a new policy to replace the previous residential certificate policy. Although promoted as a brand new opportunity for people to acquire permanent rights in Bermuda, it was in reality a way to get rid of a more generous policy and replace it with something more restrictive, but it does still offer options for some.

Until March 2021, a person could obtain a residential certificate in Bermuda if they could demonstrate that they could afford to live here without the need to work. Typically this required demonstrating an investment income of around $60,000 per year. It became unpopular with the current immigration minister, because it does not require any particular investment in Bermuda, but was rather based on the notion that persons of independent means would be likely to spend into the local economy if they had a form of settled status.

The new policy requires an investment of $2.5M, and requires the investment to be maintained for five years before a residential certificate will be granted (this can be done retrospectively if the investment has already been made).

On its face, this massively reduces the pool of people who will be interested in the policy, because that is a very sizable sum of money to be tied up in Bermuda. However, I believe there is scope for an interpretation of the policy to benefit people with significant ties to Bermuda, which I shall explore below. These may include people with housing allowances, those who can borrow to purchase government bonds, and people who already have a sizable shareholding in a business.

The big benefit of being able to obtain a residential certificate is that it puts you in the position of being able to naturalise as a British Overseas Territories citizen, which I discuss in more detail in this article.

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