Finance & Marketing

Panama City glistens in the daytime sun and is decorated with enough skyscrapers that make it appear like a miniature Manhattan. But what is more important is the way in which banking in Panama in general is enjoying its moment in the sun. The banking industry in Panama has developed quite an allure for businesses and corporations that are engaged as offshore operations.

Panama has become the most modern and successful country in Latin America and its international banking center can be described in a similar fashion. The country recently enacted legislation that meets the exacting standards for transparency and regulation, and this obviously was the appeal for the 85+ banks from 35 different countries that can be found in Panama.

Panama has also become an industry leader in the banking and financial sectors in that they have announced their support of the FATF and OECD movements. Implementation of measures to combat money laundering and terrorist funding activities occurred due to these measures .

Under the new rule enforcement large deposits and withdrawals must pass a screening system where suspicious transactions are reported to international monitoring agencies. It should be noted that so long as you are not committing any illegal acts and are strictly using Panama as a privacy haven you will never run into problems. Panama’s banking secrecy laws protect you as an account signatory and this information can only be passed to Panama authorities under a court order. Your corporate bank account transactions will only be executed in the name of the corporation not your personal name. Also, your corporation can be registered anonymously in bearer share form in Panama making this asset protection and privacy protection the best available in the world today for a non blacklisted country.

Panama became very aware that it had to start “cleaning up its image” several years ago, and as a result, they went on a mission to enhance that image and implement the improvements necessary to make them a major player in the offshore banking market. Knowing your customers more thoroughly includes tighter reference requirements as well as fund origination.

Panama has climbed to the top of the offshore banking world and is arguably right behind Switzerland in popularity now. Switzerland gets all the spotlight and Panama is just fine with that. Panama continues to enforce it’s banking secrecy laws with vigor as they know their international reputation depends on it.

Banking in Panama provides the offshore banking client of all of these aspects whether it is for their offshore corporation or for personal accounts as well. Additionally, the different government agencies have become very active in the fight against financing organized crime and terrorist activities, as well as the prevention of money laundering for these purposes. This also benefits the offshore clients in knowing that their transactions will always be safe and secure since Panama is known to cooperate with authorities for major crimes.

Panama’s banks and government are doing everything in their power to maintain the good reputation they have built since billions of dollars and over 40,000 Panamanian jobs in the banking industry are at stake. They are not going to break their own rules to deal with a criminal if they can avoid it and happily scrutinize customers more closely when setting up bank accounts.