Saint Lucia

Yes. The UK imposed a full visit and transit visa requirement on Saint Lucian nationals with effect from 5 March 2026. There is a six-week transition to 16 April 2026 for existing ETA holders with pre-booked travel. The stated reason was a significant increase in asylum claims from Saint Lucian nationals, not CBI itself, but the practical result is the same. Saint Lucia now joins Dominica as a CBI passport without UK access. Anyone who bought this passport for UK access before March 2026 now holds a materially different asset.

The National Action Bond, or NAB, is the only genuinely recoverable route in the region. You place USD 300,000 in a non-interest-bearing bond registered in your name, and it is returned after a five-year holding period. On top of that sits a non-refundable USD 50,000 administration fee. Strip out that fee and professional costs, and a family's true economic cost comes to roughly USD 65,000–80,000, plus five years of dead capital. On a five-year view, that makes it by some distance the cheapest Caribbean citizenship available. The catch is that you are lending USD 300,000 unsecured to a small, hurricane-exposed island government for five years. Price the credit risk and the opportunity cost honestly before you commit.

It is the slowest of the five. The Q4 2025 average was 18 months against an official 90-day target, the worst backlog in the Caribbean CBI sector. That delay is driven by a 424% application surge to 5,642 files in FY2024 against fixed CIU capacity, with the longest reported case running to 26 months. If your client is trying to file ahead of a rule change, Saint Lucia is the worst place to try it. The 2024 rejection rate was 5.3%.

No. That claim is common in agent marketing, but it does not hold up. Per PwC, individuals who are resident and ordinarily resident are taxed on worldwide income from all sources, whether earned in or outside Saint Lucia, at rates up to 30%. Only residents who are not ordinarily resident get the remittance basis, under which foreign income is taxed only to the extent it is remitted. A client who actually relocates and becomes ordinarily resident is taxed on worldwide income. This is a genuine trap, and one that gets widely misreported. There is no capital gains, wealth or inheritance tax. But the income tax is real.

No physical presence is required today. A 30-day requirement is expected later in 2026 under the regional ECCIRA framework. But Saint Lucia's ratification was delayed by the December 2025 election, in which the Labour Party was re-elected on 1 December 2025, and commencement was not confirmed as at July 2026. Saint Lucia permits dual citizenship, so you need not renounce your existing nationality.

This is a genuine structural advantage of Saint Lucia. The investment is transferred only after the government issues an Approval in Principle, so your capital is not at risk during adjudication. That is better practice than most of the region. On the National Economic Fund route, the USD 240,000 contribution is likewise paid only after approval in principle.

Yes. The National Economic Fund covers the applicant alone or with up to three dependants, with a spouse priced at USD 35,000, each dependant under 18 at USD 10,000, over 18 at USD 20,000, and a newborn of 12 months or under at USD 5,000. Eligible dependants include a spouse, children under 18, dependent children aged 18–30, dependent parents and grandparents over 55, and dependent siblings under 18. All applicants aged 16 and over attend a mandatory interview, virtual or in person.

Unusually exposed. It has already lost UK visa-free travel. Under Regulation (EU) 2025/2441, simply operating the scheme is now, on its own, grounds for suspending Schengen visa-free access. As at June 2026 the passport ranks 32 on the Henley index, with 143 visa-free destinations, the weakest of the five. The OECD also lists Saint Lucia's CBI scheme as potentially high-risk for CRS circumvention.