An investment licence is a permission scoped to a named set of services. We run the whole file to it: the services you want and the capital tier they set, the local company, the people the supervisor assesses by name, the programme of operations and the governance, conduct and client-asset architecture it examines. Before you pay, we tell you which authorisation reaches the investors you are going after and which one stops at the border.
Updated · Reviewed by the Prifinance team
Every EU and EEA member state licenses investment firms on the same architecture: MiFID II for permissions and conduct, the Investment Firms Regulation and Directive for prudential treatment. What you get is not a certificate but a permission scoped to a named service set, granted by an authority that assesses your directors and qualifying shareholders individually, tests your programme of operations, and can refuse. On grant it notifies into the other twenty-nine EEA states. That is what a bank, a fund platform and an institutional allocator are actually reading.
The offshore manager regimes are not paper. The BVI, Cayman and Labuan all supervise, vet principals and can refuse. What they do not do is reach European or British retail investors, and they are not built to. They are built around funds and institutional money, and the entry price is low precisely because the audience is defined. Made deliberately, that is a sound choice; made in place of a passport you actually needed, it is an expensive one.
An investment licence is scoped by service, not by ambition. Every supervised regime draws the same lines. Advising against managing, managing against dealing, client assets held against never touched, and prices each line with its own capital tier. Fixing that service set first is what keeps the capital, the application file and the launch date in one piece, because it is the service set, not the country, that sets the number.
The perimeter is jurisdiction-specific and its boundaries are real: a Labuan securities licensee may advise and deal, two-way prices included, but may not hold clients' money or assets; the BVI Approved Manager route covers BVI private, professional and closed-ended funds and their affiliates and nothing else; Cayman's Registered Person lane is limited to sophisticated investors, high-net-worth persons and group entities; Saint Lucia's FSRA licenses fund managers and administrators under the IMFA, Cap. 12.16, while securities dealing there needs the regional ECSRC licence; and the United States splits the question in two, registering investment advisers with the states or the SEC by assets and broker-dealers with the SEC and FINRA.
| Type of activity | Regulatory requirements |
|---|---|
| Investment advice | The lightest tier where no client assets are held - €75,000 in the EU, £75,000 under MIFIDPRU, US$10,000 for DFSA Category 4 and AFSA advising, JD 30,000 in Jordan, a ¥5 million deposit and no capital minimum for Japanese investment advisory |
| Discretionary portfolio management | €75,000 without client assets and €150,000 with, under the EU's IFD; CHF 100,000 plus a quarter of fixed costs for a FINMA portfolio manager; HK$100,000 liquid for SFC Type 9; FSCA Category II with key individuals examined against Board Notice 194 |
| Dealing on own account and underwriting | The top tier of every regime - €750,000 under the IFD, an Italian SIM included, £750,000 under MIFIDPRU, US$2,000,000 for DFSA Category 2, CHF 1.5 million as a Swiss securities firm - with risk-based capital above the floor |
| Holding or safekeeping client assets | The permission that moves the tier and adds the machinery: segregation, reconciliation and an audit trail evidenced before launch - CASS in the United Kingdom, custodian banks under Liechtenstein's Asset Management Act, supervisor-held custody under New Zealand's FMC Act 2013 |
| Managing a fund or collective scheme | A fund-facing permission and, usually, a registered vehicle beside it: CI$4,125 a year for a Cayman mutual or private fund, the BVI's ladder from incubator to public fund, RM2 million paid-up for Malaysian fund management under the CMSA, S$1,000,000 at the MAS retail tier |
| The people who advise, manage and deal | Named individuals approved in their own right - two responsible officers per SFC regulated activity, responsible managers ASIC accepts on an AFSL, SM&CR-vetted people at the FCA, one qualified managing director genuinely resident in Vaduz, two full-time officers at a domestic Mauritius dealer |
Names differ by jurisdiction and so does the file behind them: a CySEC CIF authorisation, an FCA authorisation under FSMA, a FINMA portfolio manager licence under FinIA, an SFC Type 9, a MAS capital markets services licence, a DFSA Category 3C, a CIMA securities manager licence, a BVI Approved Manager approval, a Labuan intermediary licence, an FSC Mauritius investment dealer licence. We map your service set onto the right scope before anything is filed.
Guides that start from a question, not from a country.
What the regulators charge to apply and each year, the capital they require and how long a decision takes.
Which licence fits which service, what the regulator checks and the steps from business plan to authorisation.
Portfolio manager, AIFM and fund manager licences: capital, fees, thresholds and timelines by jurisdiction.
Dealing licences from the SEC and the SFC to the offshore securities dealer: capital, fees, people and timelines.
What the buyer acquires, when the regulator must approve a change of control, the thresholds, filing times and fees.
Places 1 to 19 by business model, with the capital, official fees and decision times behind each place.
7 dated changes for brokers and investment firms, from ASIC's CFD order to the EU move to T+1 settlement. Each date links to its official source.
There is no best investment jurisdiction. Only the right one for your service set, your investors and the markets you sell into. Four variables decide it in practice: who you are allowed to accept as a client, what capital your services demand, how long the clock runs, and what the firm actually costs to keep running once it is licensed. Below is how the one hundred and thirteen jurisdictions we work in line up on each.
Selling to retail investors across the EEA requires a MiFID authorisation and nothing substitutes for it; the United Kingdom requires the FCA. Institutional and fund-only books are served by deliberately lighter lanes. Cayman's Registered Person route for sophisticated, high-net-worth and group counterparties, the BVI Approved Manager approval for BVI private, professional and closed-ended funds. Choosing the lane before you know the investor base is the expensive mistake.
Advice and order handling are cheap to license and dealing is not, in every regime. €75,000, €150,000 and €750,000 in the EU, an Italian SIM included; £75,000 to £750,000 in the United Kingdom; US$10,000 to US$2,000,000 across DFSA categories; HK$100,000 liquid for SFC Type 9; S$1,000,000 at the MAS retail tier; RM1,000,000 for a Labuan money broker; MUR 1,000,000 in Mauritius; US$100,000 in the Seychelles.
The BVI permits business seven days after filing. Finantsinspektsioon decides within two to six months on a statutory clock and the CSSF within six months of a complete file. Cayman runs 4-9 months, Cyprus 8-14, the FCA and Italy 9-15. Almost all the variance sits on the applicant's side: an incomplete programme of operations, principals the supervisor will not approve, and capital that is not actually paid.
Estonia and Latvia tax nothing while profits stay in the firm; Labuan charges 3% of audited profits but only against real island staff and operating expenditure; Madeira's 5% is conditional on job creation and a €75,000 investment; Bulgaria is 10% flat and Cyprus 15%. Then the substance bill arrives. Premises, staff, audit and a supervision levy, and it differs by more than the headline rates do.
| Jurisdiction | Licence & regulator | Capital / entry | Tax | What it buys you |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CyprusMore details → | CySEC CIF · MiFID II | €75k / €150k / €750k by model | 12.5% · 15% large | The passport to twenty-nine other states, inside the union's most practised cluster |
| EstoniaMore details → | Finantsinspektsioon investment firm | €75k / €150k / €750k · €3,000 fee | 0% retained · 22/78 | The same passport on a statutory clock |
| LuxembourgMore details → | CSSF investment firm - 1993 Law | €75k / €150k / €750k · four eyes | ≈23.9% aggregate | The manager licensed where the funds already sit |
| United KingdomMore details → | FCA · FSMA · MIFIDPRU | £75k / £150k / £750k by model | 25% · 19% small | The counterparty standing only London confers, and CASS-grade client assets |
| Dubai · DIFCMore details → | DFSA Category 3C / Category 4 | Category 3C per DFSA rules · US$10,000 for Category 4 | 9% · 0% qualifying | Common-law management on the wealth corridor |
| SingaporeMore details → | MAS capital markets services · SFA 2001 | S$1,000,000 retail · reduced A/I tier | 17% | Southeast Asia's wealth hub, with fund incentives built for managers |
| Cayman IslandsMore details → | CIMA securities manager · Registered Person | Greater of $100,000 or ¼ of costs · CI$6,000 to register | None | The manager licensed in the domicile allocators default to |
| BVIMore details → | BVI FSC Approved Manager · SIBA Cat. 3 | US$1,200 to apply · AUM ceilings | None | The emerging manager trading in a week, with the upgrade path written down |
Prifinance selects the jurisdiction against your service set, your investor base, your distribution plan and your budget, and says plainly when the route you arrived with is not the one that will carry your business. From there we run the entity, the capital, the application, the people file and the passporting notifications as one programme.
The full list by region. The cards above cover the routes people ask about most; everything else sits here, from the MiFID regime to island jurisdictions with fund licences.
Supervised regimes check the same four things: the company, the people, the money and the machine. The requirements below recur across CySEC, Finantsinspektsioon, Latvijas Banka, the CSSF, the FCA, FINMA, the DFSA, MAS, the SFC, CIMA, the BVI FSC and Labuan FSA. The thresholds move, the questions do not.
The EU directive and the prudential rules behind the MiFID figures on this page, ESMA on the authorisation requirement, and the regulators of the most requested routes outside the union.
Each country page names the regulator and the law behind its own figures.
The services you intend to provide, the investors you intend to accept and the markets you intend to sell into set the capital tier and the country. In that order. Fixed in writing before any drafting begins.
The local entity is incorporated, initial capital paid and evidenced, and the management body filled with directors, responsible officers and key-function holders the supervisor will actually approve.
Programme of operations and projections, governance, risk and internal audit, the conduct framework, client-asset arrangements and the AML/CFT pack. Complete on submission, not after the first question round.
Question rounds, fit-and-proper assessments of principals and qualifying shareholders, and the prudential review of own funds. This is where prepared files separate from hopeful ones, and where most of the timeline variance lives.
Licence granted, EEA notifications filed for the states you actually serve, reporting and levy calendars live, banking and custody arrangements completed. Business starts once the permission is in force.
The investment licensing market is full of intermediaries selling flags by the unit, several of which are not licences at all. We are a legal and advisory firm: we tell you what a route actually buys, build the file the supervisor examines, and stay on it after authorisation.
60+ specialists work on applications directly. Lawyers, compliance and audit people, not an outsourcing chain of resellers.
Before you pay anyone, you get a written view of which investors the licence reaches, where its perimeter runs, and whether it exists in the jurisdiction you were quoted.
The quote you approve is the price you pay. Government, regulator, audit and registry fees are stated separately and upfront.
Programmes of operations, governance and risk frameworks, conduct and client-asset arrangements and AML/CFT packs drafted to the standards the authority actually examines.
Passporting notifications, prudential and conduct reporting, substance and audit calendars, renewals, and the upgrade path when a firm outgrows the approval it started on.
15 years in FinTech and payments. Maps your service set to the right licence scope and leads the file to the supervisor's decision, including banking, custody and distribution arrangements.
Builds the application itself: the local company, the programme of operations, AML/KYC policy pack, capital structure and tax registrations. His document sets are the reason reviews finish in months, not years.
First point of contact for international founders. Runs the whole setup remotely, across time zones and languages - from the first call to a live, authorised investment firm.
An investment firm carries two separate tax questions, and founders routinely collapse them into one: what the firm pays on the fees it earns, and what the structure costs to keep compliant once substance conditions attach to the rate. A jurisdiction can be cheap on the first and expensive on the second.
Estonia and Latvia tax distributed profit alone - 0% while the money stays in the firm, then 22/78 in Estonia and 20/80 in Latvia. Georgia runs the same logic at 0% retained and 15% on distribution. A firm that compounds its own fees pays nothing at corporate level until it pays out.
Bulgaria at 10% flat is the union's lowest after Hungary's 9%, Cyprus 15% and Liechtenstein 12.5% flat; roughly 12% combined in Zug, 8.25% then 16.5% profits tax in Hong Kong, 9% in Dubai with 0% on qualifying free-zone income, 17% in Lithuania and 17% in Singapore. Above them sit Luxembourg near 23.9% aggregate, the United Kingdom at 25% and Italy near 28%. Paid for depth, proximity and distribution.
The Cayman Islands, the BVI, the Bahamas and Vanuatu charge no corporate income tax, no capital gains tax and no withholding. The fiscal relationship is licence and registry fees, known to the dollar: CI$10,000 a year for a Cayman securities manager, CI$4,125 for a registered fund, US$6,000 a year for a Seychelles securities dealer.
Labuan's 3% of audited profits depends on island staff and operating expenditure that a mandatory audit verifies, with a 24% Malaysian backstop for structures that fail the test. Mauritius reaches roughly 3% effective through the partial-exemption system, on a 15% headline. Madeira's 5% on qualifying income runs to 31 December 2033 against job-creation and investment conditions, with admission to the regime open only until 31 December 2026.
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It depends on your investors and your services, not on price. If you need to reach European retail or professional clients, that means a MiFID authorisation - Cyprus for the deepest cluster, Estonia or Latvia for the clock and the tax, Luxembourg where the funds already sit. If you are launching a debut fund for institutional money, the BVI Approved Manager approval or a Cayman lane costs a fraction and fits the audience. If your book is Asian or Gulf, that points to MAS, the SFC, the DFSA or Labuan.
On grant, an EU or EEA investment firm licence notifies into the other twenty-nine EEA states - no re-authorisation in each one. A Tallinn licence and a Luxembourg licence buy the same market access, which is why the choice between member states turns on the clock, the cost, the substance bill and the tax rather than on the permissions themselves.
It follows the service set. In the union: €75,000 for advice, order reception and transmission, execution and portfolio management without holding client assets; €150,000 as the general tier; €750,000 where you deal on own account or underwrite on a firm-commitment basis. Own funds must then be the highest of initial capital, a quarter of fixed overheads and the K-factor sum. The United Kingdom mirrors the ladder at £75,000 to £750,000, and an Italian SIM follows the union's tiers under the Banca d'Italia's SIM regulation of 23 December 2022.
It is a real approval from the BVI FSC, and it is open about its limits. US$1,200 to apply, US$1,800 on approval and US$1,800 a year, business permitted seven days after filing, the Commission responding within thirty days, and exemption from the Regulatory Code - against ceilings of US$400 million under management for open-ended private and professional funds and US$1 billion for closed-ended, and eligibility limited to BVI funds and their affiliates. Cross the ceiling and you notify within seven days and move to a full SIBA Category 3 licence within three months.
Your investor base decides. The full securities manager licence - CI$1,000 to apply, CI$10,000 on grant and a year, base financial resources of $100,000 or a quarter of annual expenditure, whichever is greater - carries any client base; a restricted licence with capped client numbers costs CI$5,000 on grant and a year. The Registered Person route at CI$6,000 to register and CI$6,000 annually is supervised and materially lighter, but it is limited to sophisticated investors, high-net-worth persons and group entities. Taking the lighter lane with the wrong investors is a compliance problem, not a saving.
No. EEA retail distribution requires a MiFID authorisation from a member state, and the United Kingdom requires the FCA. The BVI, Cayman, Labuan, Mauritius, the Seychelles and Vanuatu regimes carry funds, institutional mandates and global books - a real business, but not the European or British retail one.
Yes, but a regional one, built for the local market rather than a worldwide book. Securities business in or from St Vincent, Dominica and St Kitts and Nevis, as in Antigua, is licensed by the ECSRC under each territory's Securities Act: a broker-dealer needs a company of a currency-union territory and EC$1.0 million paid up, an investment adviser EC$250,000, and on 7 November 2026 the register listed 16 broker-dealers, most of them banks or bank-owned. The national regulators license other businesses. The SVG FSA licenses mutual fund managers and administrators under the Mutual Funds Act and expects a firm to be licensed where its clients are located; Dominica's Financial Services Unit lists credit unions, insurance, money services businesses, offshore banking and virtual asset businesses; the FSRC in St Kitts and Nevis covers insurance, pensions, money services, credit unions and trust and corporate services, and international banks in Nevis. For an international brokerage or fund manager these places work as a corporate or holding layer inside a group licensed where its clients are, and we build that version, in writing.
The BVI permits business seven days after the application is filed. Labuan, the Seychelles and Georgia run three to six months. Cayman, Mauritius and New Zealand run four to nine. Bulgaria, Dubai and Hong Kong run six to ten, and Lithuania, Singapore and Switzerland six to twelve. Cyprus runs 8-14 months and the FCA and Italy 9-15. Estonia binds its clock in statute at two to six months and the CSSF decides within six months of a complete file, but statutory clocks measure the supervisor's time, not the time you spend getting the file complete.
Yes, and increasingly the tax rate depends on it. Supervisors name individuals - two responsible officers per SFC regulated activity, two managers under the CSSF's four-eyes rule, SM&CR individuals at the FCA, one qualified managing director genuinely resident in Vaduz, two full-time officers at a domestic dealer in Mauritius. Labuan's 3% rate is conditional on island staff and operating expenditure that a mandatory audit verifies, with a 24% backstop for structures that fail, and Cayman and the BVI apply economic substance filings by activity.
Yes, and it is a normal path. A firm licensed for advice and order handling extends into portfolio management, then into dealing, with capital moving up the ladder as it goes; a BVI Approved Manager moves to a full SIBA Category 3 licence; a Cayman Registered Person moves to a securities manager licence when the investor base widens. Upgrades are far cheaper when the group, the governance and the client-asset arrangements were built with the move in mind, which is why we map it before it is needed.
An investment licence is an authorisation from a state financial supervisor to provide investment services to clients: advising, receiving and transmitting orders, executing them, managing portfolios, dealing on own account, holding client assets. Every regime scopes it by service and prices each service with its own capital tier: a MiFID investment firm in the EU, FCA permission under FSMA in the UK, a FINMA portfolio manager or securities firm in Switzerland, SFC Types 1, 4 and 9 in Hong Kong, a MAS capital markets services licence in Singapore, DFSA categories in Dubai, CIMA's securities manager licence in Cayman. What it is not: a company registration with 'capital' or 'investments' in the name, and the places that sell exactly that are marked on this page.
Five steps. Fix the service set and the investor base, because they choose the jurisdiction and the capital tier. Incorporate the local company, pay in the initial capital and appoint the directors and key-function holders the supervisor will assess by name. Prepare the file: programme of operations, three-year projections, governance, risk and compliance framework, conduct policies, client-asset arrangements, AML/CFT pack. File it complete and work through the regulator's question rounds. Then notify the passport where there is one, connect custody and banking, and start once the authorisation is granted. The BVI permits business seven days after filing; Estonia decides within two to six months by statute; Cyprus runs 8-14 months and the FCA 9-15. How complete the file is on day one is what moves the clock.
Four things are checked everywhere: a local licensed entity with real management, capital matched to the service set, fit-and-proper owners and named individuals, and governance, conduct and client-asset machinery that works before launch. The cost has three lines. Capital: €75,000, €150,000 or €750,000 in the EU, £75,000 to £750,000 in the UK, CHF 100,000 for a FINMA portfolio manager, RM300,000 for a Labuan fund manager. Regulator fees: €3,000 to file in Estonia, nothing in Latvia, US$1,200 to apply for a BVI Approved Manager, CI$1,000 to apply and CI$10,000 a year in Cayman. And substance: premises, resident officers, audit and the supervision levy, from €5,000 a year in Latvia. We quote our own fee in writing after the free assessment, once the jurisdiction and the service set are fixed.
Four families, and most regimes stack them. Advisory licences, for personal recommendations without touching client money: the lightest tier everywhere. Order-handling and execution licences, for reception, transmission and execution of client orders, with the tier moving up the moment client assets are held. Management licences, for discretionary portfolios and funds: the FINMA portfolio manager, SFC Type 9, DFSA Category 3C, the MAS fund management tier, CIMA's securities manager, the BVI Approved Manager. And dealing licences, for own-account trading and underwriting: the top tier, €750,000 in the EU and CHF 1.5 million for a Swiss securities firm. An EU MiFID investment firm can carry all four under one authorisation and passport them into the other twenty-nine states.
The permission usually is: in most regimes a forex or CFD broker holds the same investment-firm or securities-dealer licence with dealing permissions, from the same CySEC, FCA, ASIC, Seychelles FSA or VFSC. What differs is the file. A brokerage lives on the dealing model, the leverage rules and the client-money architecture rather than on an advisory or management mandate, and the capital tier follows the model. If your business is a brokerage, the forex licence section walks that route in fifty jurisdictions; if it is advice, portfolio or fund management, you are on the right page.
Someone in the structure does, and usually it is the manager rather than the fund. A Luxembourg RAIF needs an authorised AIFM above it, a Swiss L-QIF a FINMA-licensed institution, a Cayman or BVI fund a licensed or approved manager, and the fund itself registers or notifies. If you are launching a vehicle to raise capital, the funds and trusts section covers the vehicles, the domiciles and the costs; the manager's licence, the subject of this page, is chosen alongside it.
Get a free legal opinion on your project - our legal team will analyse your case at no cost and provide a written opinion: which jurisdiction, licence scope and structure fit your service set, your investors and your distribution plan.
