Yesterday we mentioned offshore insurance as a means to reduce tax liability, so thought it appropriate to share more information on the topic of offshore insurance bonds also known as investment wrappers are widely used by expatriates to invest offshore.
The popularity of wrappers is largely due to the fact that investors can own and manage a diverse portfolio of offshore funds within a single cost effective financial product providing significant tax benefits.
One of the main reasons expatriates favour offshore insurance bonds is because technically they only own an insurance policy with a death payout equally to the value of the funds held within their bond. The investment funds held within the wrapper are technically owned by the offshore bond provider which pays no income or capital gains tax within the funds. Therefore once invested and apart from any withholding tax deducted at source an investor’s capital can accumulate entirely free of tax.
An offshore insurance bond (or investment bond) is a single premium life assurance policy for the purposes of investment.
Due to tax laws they are a common form of investment in the UK and some offshore centres.
Traditionally insurance bonds were with-profits policies and were often called with-profit(s) bonds. Since the introduction of unitised insurance funds they have often been marketed as unit-linked bonds or investment bonds.
Photo credit: molossus, who says Life Imitates Doodles via Visualhunt.com / CC BY-NC-ND
Leave a Reply