Choosing your Representative

La Vida recognises you have choice when choosing your agent and representative. Country boundaries and physical location offer few restrictions as to where your agency needs to be based. It’s not necessary to meet your consultant in order to commence business. But with this in mind it is still important to do your checks and due diligence on who you want to work for you. We have listed below many of the questions we recommend you ask about any business you are thinking of engaging to represent you for residency or citizenship through investment.

1. Is your agent authorised to promote the programme where required by the government?
2. Is your agent based in a jurisdiction (country) where you are confident in the law that will be applied?
3. Does your agent offer you a full contract and detailed quote with all costs included?
4. Can you verify your agent. Offices or web including full bios on consultants, reviews, press and news mentions?
5. Is your agent prominent in this industry? Do they have a significant presence? Conferences, news appearances, recommendations?
6. Does your agent have experience in the particular programme?
7. Can they offer tailored insight and analysis to the programme, the strength of the passport and what it adds for you personally?
8. Does your agent have experience in the investment class (eg International Real Estate)
9. Is your agent offering you prices or promises that are “too good to be true”?
10. Does your agent insist on taking full payment themselves rather than allowing you to pay the government or developer direct?
11. Is your agent a corporate member of the only recognised industry body, the IMC?
12. Is your agent supported by independent, professional legal partners who you have access too?
13. Has your agent dealt with applicants and investors from your country previously? La Vida 150+ countries.
14. Do they have a team experienced at processing remotely with dedicated staff?
15. Can they offer genuine client testimonials over a period of time to back up their claims?
16. Is your agent an “advisor” to any government programmes or are they completely independent and offering impartial advice?
17. Was your agent involved in the previous illegal discounting scandal that could lead to lost citizenships in the Caribbean?
18. Does your agency offer a secure online portal for submitting your confidential documentation?
19. Does your agency have sufficient experience and understanding of government fees and programme changes to include all the necessary costs in their quotation?
20. Has your agency built an AI functionality based on over 100 years combined staff experience, 80,000+ client interactions and thousands of pages of documents to help support you?
21. Does your agent offer financial stability and sufficient financial resource to see through your application? The last set of publicly filed accounts for La Vida demonstrate over £10million (USD $13million) in liquid assets.
22. Is any data and documentation you exchange as part of your application stored in a safe jurisdiction? La Vida, based in the UK, is subject to the EU’s GDPR. Widely regarded as one of the most comprehensive data protection frameworks in the world. For example, the UAE and China have far more government authority to access data compared to the EU.