Following a recent spate of changes by CBI-bearing countries to make their programmes more family-friendly, the Saint & Kitts Nevis Citizenship by Investment Unit has announced the inclusion of siblings in its CBI Programme, making it the last Caribbean island to do so.
A Notice released on November 6th by the Saint Kitts & Nevis Citizenship by Investment Unit outlined changes to the CBI programme’s dependent criteria effective immediately, outlining that main applicants are now permitted to include siblings in their CBI applications.
Saint Kitts now joins its Caribbean island CBI Programme-offering counterparts with the inclusion of siblings.
In line with the other countries that allow the inclusion of siblings, St Kitts’ CBI Unit delivers a set of criteria that must be met by applicants. These criteria include that they can only be a sibling of the main applicant, and not the spouse or other family member; they must be 30 years of age or younger; they must be childless; and they must be financially dependent on the main applicant. If all such criteria is met, then siblings can be included as part of any new application from November 6th 2020 onwards.
This will of course, similar to others, incur additional fees – US$20,000 per sibling for applications via the Sustainable Growth Fund contribution option; and US$40,000 per sibling for applications under the real estate option.
Criteria differs for all Caribbean CBI Programmes
This announcement by Saint Kitts & Nevis, which delivers the longest-running and most established Citizenship by Investment programme in the world, puts the country in line with its other four Caribbean counterparts – Dominica, Grenada, Saint Lucia and Antigua & Barbuda – all of whom have included siblings in their CBI Programme applications for some time, though all with very different criteria.
Antigua & Barbuda offers the most limiting criteria for its inclusion of siblings, requiring that siblings can only be included where the sibling is “by reason of age or infirmity of body or mind wholly dependent on that person for his or her subsistence or maintenance”.
The criteria for all are different, however. Of the four, only Grenada and Dominica allow inclusion of siblings of the spouse as well as the main applicant (Saint Kitts and Saint Lucia do not), while Saint Lucia and Grenada do not require the sibling’s financial dependence on the main applicant (St Kitts and Dominica do).
The age criteria is different for all too. The maximum age for siblings allowed in Saint Lucia is 18 (they must also be unmarried and in receipt of consent from their parent or guardian), while in Dominica it’s 25 and Saint Kitts, 30. Grenada has no maximum age restriction but does require a minimum allowance age of 18.
Recently, Dominica further amended the meaning of ‘dependent’ to include a wider range of family members, including adopted siblings, in addition to blood siblings.
CBI countries becoming increasingly family-friendly
In fact, there has been a raft of changes to dependent criteria in 2019/2020 with countries becoming ever-more flexible in the inclusion of dependents acknowledging the importance of family to most applicants.
Earlier this year, Saint Kitts temporarily reduced (until December 2020) the cost of citizenship for families via its donation route by US$45,000, as did Saint Lucia and Antigua & Barbuda, while Dominica extended inclusion to grandparents and adopted siblings.
And reflecting just how important family inclusiveness is for HNWIs when choosing a CBI Programme today, the annual CBI Index added the criteria of Family to its recently released report (CBI Index 2020) in evaluating the currently available CBI Programmes.
“The addition of the Family Pillar to the 2020 edition of the CBI Index reflects the fact that family eligibility is an increasingly significant consideration for prospective investors choosing citizenship by investment,” reports the CBI Index 2020.
“The 2020 CBI Index recognises that the rise of increasingly complex family relationships is driving investors to seek programmes that allow for a more diverse range of family members to be included under a primary application.”
Saint Kitts’ platinum-standard Citizenship by Investment programme
Delivering the longest-running, most established Citizenship by Investment programme, Saint Kitts’ CIP has been setting the standard for the CBI industry for 36 years and as a result has secured multiple awards.
It is widely renowned in the industry for being one of the most efficient, transparent and reliable options for economic citizenship and has been recently announced as the second best CBI Programme worldwide (just one point less than Dominica) according to the CBI Index 2020.
The fastest CIP worldwide, it is the only citizenship by investment nation to offer a secure, fast-track route. For a fee, the Accelerated Application Process (AAP) delivers a guaranteed 60-day result.
Headquartered in London with 14 offices worldwide, including in Malta and the UAE, our preferred partner, Latitude, is a leading international firm in Citizenship-by-Investment and is a government-approved agent for all the programmes it offers including St Kitts & Nevis.
To find out more about the Saint Kitts & Nevis CBI Programme, read our country profile by clicking here