Updated List of 54 Countries Where You Can Still Bank in Private
Non CRS Countries as of July 2022
The Common Reporting Standard is a project undertaken by the OECD to eliminate banking privacy worldwide. We have previously reported that the CRS rules have more holes than Swiss cheese and it’s easy to avoid CRS. However, you may wish to bank in one of the countries which are not part of CRS.
Non CRS countries are countries that have either not signed up to CRS at all or countries that will start exchanging CRS data at a later date.
In this article, I will share only the non-CRS countries as of March 2021. I’ve previously written about how you can avoid CRS completely without having to bank in a non CRS country. In fact, it may well be preferable to use one of the many CRS loopholes I described here than to bank in a more risky non-CRS country. That being said there are still a few respectable jurisdictions that will not share your private banking information under CRS rules.
Here are the Non-CRS countries as of July 2022:
It’s worth paying attention to the jurisdictions that will start sharing information in 2022 or 2023. Georgia has been a favourite of the offshore community for some time. They will start sharing CRS information in 2023 and cease to be a non CRS country. If confidentiality is important to you it’s important to take action soon to restructure your banking arrangements in the country. You don’t necessarily have to close your accounts or even change banks. You just need to change the structure, perhaps using a company that has local operations. Or you can choose to move your banking to one of the non CRS countries.
The United States is an option if you’re a non-US citizen or non-US resident. While the United States started this whole craze of ending banking privacy with FACTA they have no obligation to report accounts of non-residents or non-citizens. They will likely co-operate with any inquiry from your home government though even if they don’t share automatically. If you decide to bank there consider using a corporation and opening the account in its name. Personally, I’d deal with other non CRS countries rather than risk dealing with the USA. There are still good options for incorporation there but banking is generally better and more secure elsewhere.
There are still several decent non CRS banking countries that make good options. These include Armenia, Serbia, and Ukraine. Serbia and Armenia have some great options and some banks will open accounts remotely too.
Those looking for more intricate details of how CRS works may be interested in the information exchange handbook from the OECD which is available by clicking here.
