British Virgin Islands Premier Natalio Wheatley has doubled down on efforts to maintain an active investment stream from Greater China, while moving in quickly to secure new growth sources in Asia amid geopolitical uncertainties.
Wheatley, also the BVI Finance, Financial Services and Trade Minister, visited the Law.asia office on 17 February as he led a delegation on an Asia-Pacific tour, from 16 to 21 February, stopping in Hong Kong, Macau, Shenzhen and Malaysia for meetings with stakeholders including government officials.
Wheatley has said he wants to further deepen the BVI’s engagement with Shenzhen, pointing out that the relationship with the city pertains to their interests in technology, artificial intelligence and electric vehicles, which the Chinese tech hub is well known for.
The BVI’s endeavour to align its product offering with cutting-edge technology and product innovation led the BVI premier to visit the Qianhai Innovation Park in an effort to further operationalise the existing BVI-Qianhai memorandum of understanding.
In recent years, however, the BVI has increasingly serviced larger volumes of business from Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia via Singapore and Labuan, a federal territory of Malaysia and a duty-free island. Wheatley pointed out that the BVI held the third-largest percentage of ownership among Labuan Malaysian companies, making Malaysia a strong source of potential growth for the territory.
“In keeping with the BVI’s market diversification strategy for 2025-2035, newer market targets include all of Asean and India,” he said.
Wheatley also singled out India and Asean as high potential targets for strategic partnerships to promote BVI business. He said each of these markets had a nascent or maturing international financial centre, such as Gujarat International Financial Centre in India and Labuan International Financial Centre in Malaysia.
“BVI business companies, funds and trust products are well recognised by regional regulators, but remain underutilised,” he said. “Expanding visibility and fostering formal co-operation, through targeted product development and strategic marketing in those jurisdictions, can significantly enhance the adoption and scale of BVI business across the Asia-Pacific region.”
The BVI premier told Law.asia that his government sought to enter into co-operation agreements with those financial centres, formalising complementary partnerships that would allow for mutual benefit.
“Additionally, the BVI aims to expand its licensee base among local firms and corporates, through its Managed Trust Licensing Regime, which enables them to offer BVI financial services without requiring a physical presence in the territory.”
The primary products for those markets will focus on investment funds, virtual assets, trusts and international trading companies or BVI business companies.
But even as the British Virgin Islands doubles down on new targets for regional expansion, Greater China remains the core of its regional operations.
Wheatley told Law.asia that the BVI’s primary market for more than 35 years had been heavily China-centric, as well as extending into East Asian markets in South Korea and Taiwan, with such business having been funnelled primarily through Hong Kong and Singapore.
“Fifty-seven percent of our business comes from the Asia-Pacific region, and 44% from Macau, Hong Kong and mainland China,” he said.
In January last year, the BVI International Arbitration Centre entered into an agreement with the Shenzhen Court of International Arbitration, aiming to bolster international arbitration co-operation between the two regions. The BVI also signed a memorandum of understanding with Qianhai, Shenzhen, in 2014.
“The BVI will, in the near future, seek a similar MoU with Shanghai’s International Arbitration Centre branch in Hong Kong, allowing BVI arbitration proceedings to be undertaken in Hong Kong itself. This will be an important development as the largest number of BVI practitioners outside of the BVI are located in Hong Kong.”
The BVI government established a representative office in Hong Kong in September 2013, with former deputy premier Lorna Smith acting as its first director. Hong Kong also houses the largest number of BVI practitioners and licensees outside the territory, according to the BVI government.
The BVI Financial Services Commission states that a BVI business company is one formed under the BVI Business Companies Act of 2004. The commission released data in December 2024 showing that, as of the end of last year, 356,675 companies had registered in the BVI. The number of new incorporations in the fourth quarter of last year marked a 23.68% increase from the same period in 2023.
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