qwerty007: I don’t think they are untethered at all, especially in the case of Swiss banks. These banks, for the most part, cooperate fully with the US Dept. of Justice as regards information sharing, and that does not bode well if you wish to protect your money from government intrusion.

I used to work for a large international insurance broker, Willis PLC, based out of London. We did a tremendous amount of business with captive insurance and reinsurance, based out of the Caribbean. We worked with Citi, Deutschebank, and Barclay’s, all of whom had offices down there. The quality of personnel was top-notch and, in point of fact, several of the larger Swiss banks posted senior personnel there solely to work the financing angle on captives.

A large oil company, which shall remain nameless, worked with us on creating a captive for its oil tankers and their cargo. The tankers were Bahamanian flagged, the oil cargo was owned by a shell in the Netherland Antilles, we handled the captive, AIG (through Ace in the Caribbean) did the reinsurance “layering” and Royal Bank of Scotland (through their correspondence branch in the Caribbean) did the finance and banking.

Plus, the weather is nicer and the flight is shorter.