According to the study made by British company Capital Economics and funded by the BVI government, the banks operating in the jurisdiction are owed US$919 million which are loans to the customers, and more than 90 per cent of the customers are from the BVI territory.
The report stated that there are six deposit-taking licences issued by the regulatory authority, and banking services are mostly limited to deposit taking and direct lending. The sources of most part of deposits into the BVI banks are domestic. Along with customer deposits, which made about 66% of funding on the BVI banking balance sheet in 2015, there are US$189 million of interbank deposits and US$623 million of issued debt, shareholder’s equity and other instruments. As at September 2015, the BVI banking system has US$2.4 billion in assets.
Capital Economics reported that much of the funding collected by BVI banks goes to their Caribbean and Latin America’s parents operations, so BVI is providing liquidity in US dollars to the neighbouring economies.
The banking sector of the British Virgin Islands employs 270 people. In 2016 it contributed US$34 million in gross value added, and paid US$5 million in taxes.
