Nevis trust requirements

Identity and address

You will need a certified copy of a current passport together with proof of your home address issued no more than three months ago. That certification has to come from a notary public, a solicitor, or another approved professional. Since the rules are not uniform, check which categories of certifier a given trustee accepts before you have anything certified. Where a trust has corporate settlors or more than one settlor, every entity and individual concerned must satisfy the identity checks. The underlying AML duties behind all of this are identical in Nevis and the Cook Islands, yet the precise documentation each trustee expects can vary.

Source of wealth

This is a written account of the origin of your money — your career or business background, the major events that built your wealth such as inheritances, property deals, and business disposals, and how your assets are currently spread — backed up by documents created at the time. The story carries as much weight as the paperwork itself. Faced with documents that come without explanation, a trustee will assume the cautious version of events. Set out a coherent, properly evidenced account and you cut down the follow-up questions and speed up the review.

It is on source of wealth review that Nevis trustees differ from one another the most. A well-funded Nevis trustee that has real compliance systems in place will scrutinise things to much the same degree as the Cook Islands. Operators at the budget end may probe less — easier for you at onboarding, but a sign of an AML process that does less to protect where the trust stands over the long run.

The solvency affidavit

This is a sworn declaration that you are solvent, are aware of no claims against you, and that making the transfer will neither push you into insolvency nor strip you of enough assets outside the trust to cover the obligations you can reasonably foresee. The Nevis ordinance, like the Cook Islands statute, tests solvency as at the date of the transfer. Documenting a sound solvency position when the trust is set up creates contemporaneous evidence that bears directly on any fraudulent transfer analysis should the settlement later be attacked.

Keep it accurate. This affidavit is made under oath. Playing down what you owe or inflating what you own produces a difficulty far greater than anything the trust was ever meant to guard against.

Asset documentation

These fall into the same groups as for a Cook Islands trust: for cash, bank statements plus the source of the funds; for securities, brokerage statements; for private companies, the accounts and shareholders agreement; for real estate, title documents; and for cryptocurrency, exchange history and wallet provenance. The trustee runs its own compliance review and will turn away any asset it is uneasy about holding, no matter how uncomplicated it appears to the settlor.

How trustee quality varies across the Nevis market

There are hundreds of licensed trustees operating in Nevis. With numbers like that, the thoroughness of the onboarding review differs enormously. A trustee that presses hard on source of wealth and carries out real AML analysis is the one worth choosing, even where it means a longer wait. A review that waves documentation through without real scrutiny costs less and moves faster at first, but it is worth far less if the trust is ever challenged, because how rigorous the trustee's compliance was at formation shows up in the very file a court would go through.

This is the core reason, when picking a trustee, to go with Southpac's Nevis operation or another provider that has genuine compliance infrastructure in place rather than a lighter-touch one. See choosing a Nevis trustee and Southpac Trust Nevis.

See formation for the full sequence and cost for what the process costs.