We are often contacted by American Expats and others who are classed as U.S. Persons by the IRS to learn more about opening an offshore brokerage account.  Many of these individuals are struggling to find an efficient and reasonably priced platform to manage their investments.  As the United States increases the regulatory burden on domestic and international brokerages it is more and more common for U.S. based firms to back away from opening and maintaining accounts for those who reside abroad.  This limits the choices for Expat investors and is especially difficult for Americans who find that they are not always able to open accounts in the country where they reside.

While there are no insurmountable barriers to dealing with U.S. Persons abroad it does require a little extra work.  OneTRADEx is more than happy to open accounts with U.S. Persons and other Expats no matter where they reside outside of the United States.  OneTRADEx is FATCA compliant and can onboard clients after receiving proper due diligence documentation without an investor needing to come visit us in the beautiful tax-neutral Cayman Islands. I have read more than one blog posting where Expats needed to fly to Singapore or another jurisdiction to open a brokerage account, or go through the expense of maintaining a mail forwarding account so they could pretend to still live in the United States.  We would be happy for all of our clients to come and see us in person, however this seems like a colossal waste of time and money.  Realistically with the internet, email, couriers and notarization of documents there is no reason to fly from Japan or some other country to open an investment account in Singapore.  This is especially true when you consider that with trades as low as $9.95, no custody fees, incredibly low margin rates and an award-winning offshore trading platform, OneTRADEx provides great execution and lower costs.