The announcement landed with quiet certainty: every participating Caribbean CBI nation has signed onto a new regional regulatory framework, and parliaments are moving to enact it. Behind the headlines is a simple narrative with big implications for investors—by the end of October 2025, a shared authority, modeled on the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank’s cooperative structure, is slated to harmonize standards, strengthen due diligence, and restore long-term confidence across the OECS programs of Antigua & Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts & Nevis, and Saint Lucia.
For years, families shopped between jurisdictions, calibrating price, speed, and benefits against uneven rules. That era is ending. A single, harmonized “rulebook” promises predictability: clearer comparisons, fewer surprises, and a more professionalized path from intent to issuance. The trade-off is deliberate—tighter KYC/AML, multi-layer screening, data-sharing among units, and ongoing monitoring. In practice, that means cleaner approvals for qualified applicants and stronger protection for visa-free access over the long run.
Enforcement won’t be theoretical. The framework introduces defined offences and penalties, giving the new authority the teeth it needs to police standards and deter bad actors. Transitional provisions should keep files moving as regulations come online, but investors should expect procedural updates, revised checklists, and new attestations during the rollout. In other words: plan early, document well, and build time buffers.
For HNWIs and family offices, the strategy shifts from opportunistic purchases to institutional-grade planning:
- Risk management improves as reputational and regulatory exposure declines under one coherent standard.
- Process quality rises—yet demands better file engineering: watertight source-of-funds narratives, corporate documentation, tax attestations, and wealth provenance ready for centralized review.
- Timing and planning matter more; lead times may adjust as the unified model beds in.
- Optionality becomes easier to orchestrate: the Caribbean sits alongside EU and Asia residency routes inside a single mobility plan without friction from inconsistent rules.
If you’re preparing now, work from an investor’s checklist: run an eligibility audit against enhanced due-diligence thresholds; re-map jurisdiction fit based on your family composition, processing expectations, and travel goals; pre-assemble documentation to the new standard; and keep contingency routes warm (Americas/EU/Asia) if milestones slip during the transition.
How Globalia (Partner of Globevisa Group) turns this into execution
- Private advisory & structuring: We translate the framework into a bespoke Caribbean strategy aligned to mobility, tax posture, and succession.
- Due-diligence engineering: End-to-end KYC/AML, source-of-funds storytelling, corporate records, and asset trails built to centralized thresholds.
- Program selection & execution: Side-by-side comparisons of Antigua, Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts & Nevis, and St Lucia under harmonized rules; submissions coordinated as procedures phase in.
- Risk & timeline management: Real-time monitoring of legislative rollouts, with checklists, milestones, and funding flows adjusted proactively—plus parallel tracks (EU residency, Panama/LatAm, Asia) to protect timing.
Next step: Request a confidential consultation with Globalia to align your family’s mobility plan with the Caribbean’s unified framework—and benchmark it against 100+ global options on the Globevisa platform.