An offshore bank is a bank that provides services to someone that is not a resident of the country where the bank is located. Any bank can be an offshore bank, but usually the term is referred to banks that operate in so-called tax havens, countries with very low or no taxation.

Although offshore banks have a very good reputation among their clients, offshore banks are always subject to general public suspicion and are not very popular with most governments of non-tax havens. They are said to encourage tax evasion, since usually the offshore banks in tax havens do not give out any information about their clients and their accounts, giving their clients the opportunity to “hide” their taxable income from their own (often heavily-taxing) country of residence.

Offshore banks are also often associated with money laundering and the underground economy because they do not provide information about their clients to any authority. Especially following 11 September 2001, suspicions of criminality have grown with regard to offshore banks, with several national (U.S.) authorities accusing them of providing financial services to terrorist groups.

However, the dark picture of offshore banks completely ignores the high quality service of the average offshore bank. Switzerland is traditionally the most popular country for offshore banking. Swiss banks have been building a reputation of trustworthy, secure and secretive banks since hundreds of years. Offshore banks in other popular banking locations also provide high quality to their wealthy clients. Offshore banking is an elite business with matching high quality service standards.

The popularity of the Swiss bank as an offshore bank finds its origin in the Swiss Banking Act of 1934. The Act guarantees absolute secrecy. The country has a long tradition of bank secrecy that dates back to the Middle Ages. In 1934, the Swiss bank secrecy was laid out in a law. It is mainly due to this guaranteed secrecy that Swiss banks are traditionally very popular as offshore banks. All Swiss banks are regulated by an independent branch of the Swiss government, the Federal Banking Commission.

Offshore banking can bring you many advantages such as high quality service and many other services that domestic banks do not provide. Read more about opening an offshore bank account, the advantages of offshore banking, popular offshore banks and offshore banking at OffshoreBank.net.

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