Dominica: CS Global has released the fourth edition of the Citizenship by Investment (CBI) Index with some significant changes. CBI index, which provides all accurate information about the Citizenships program.
James McKay, who worked on this fourth edition of the CBI index, said that they, as of 2020, were quite different from the others due to COVID-19 government application procedures and transition process differed from other years.
Answering to the reasons behind Dominica received gots the highest score in the CBI Index, McKay said, “Dominica has been a consistently strong performer since the CBI Index was first created. It’s
important to remember that the different investors and business people will always have different priorities. Hence, each index pillar has an equal weighting to allow users to measure those programme attributes that are most important to them.”
Conversing with Aisha Mohamed, James added,” Dominica’s success can be attributed to a strong performance across several pillars, including minimum investment outlay, mandatory travel residence, citizenship timeline, ease of processing, and of course due diligence.”
James Mckay revealed that Dominica has been leading the CBI Index for several years, and in 2020 it conquered two more pillars, including- CBI in the family pillar, which measures the degree of flexibility of a programme to add other family members to a primary application.
On the note, “We felt that was very important to create simply because so many investors are now seeking to include a wide variety of family members in their applications.”
Talking about other Pillar is the certainty of product, which measures the programme’s certainty across five dimensions. These are longevity, popularity, renowned stability, reputation, and adaptability.
He added, “We felt it was important to include because of the rapid growth of the industry. It really is becoming increasingly
important to have a robust means of evaluating the different products on the market as like any other investment space.”
Remembering Pandemic crises, James said, “pandemic has to an extent shifted investor priority, and on many levels, there will be a
reassessment of priorities taking place as a result of the pandemic. Because suddenly, due to the unprecedented closure of borders around the world, many investors just simply found themselves grounded in their own countries.”
James also said that the big difference now is that because of COVID-19, a large percentage of the interest being generated by CBI investment such as business travel and tourism has simply been badly affected.
Predicting CBI’s future, James McKay, “I would say the change is on the horizon, and we have already witnessed some. For example, some have ended their CBI and developed a new CBI proposition within the“Granting of Citizenship for Exceptional Services Regulations” framework. So, there are changes there. And of course, the biggest shock undoubtedly was the sudden end to the Cyprus CBI programme because just as it seemed as if the country had made the necessary changes to the programme, in the last 12 to 18 months, which included changes to the investment fund structure and more stringent due diligence checks, the programme disappeared virtually overnight. “
He added, “The investigations, I believe, is still ongoing.”
James pointed out, “And finally, another interesting aspect will be to monitor whether countries make adjustments to the programme price levels due to COVID-19 and the related economic impacts. So, for example, Jordan lowered its minimum investment outlay threshold. They did that actually despite high application numbers, at least those numbers that were reported officially.”
In conclusion, he said, “So, it will be interesting to see if other countries decide to follow that example. Still, in any case, as always, it will always be interesting to see how the industry changes in the coming year, particularly as COVID-19 vaccines bring hope to people and reinvigorate the economies.”
