Within a full day of presentations and panel discussions involving government officials and industry representatives in the field of global citizenship-by-investment programs, many challenges and issues have arisen.

From government perspective, lawmakers are realizing the increased competitiveness in this market, which can be identified as a key to finance public debt and facilitate job creation in these challenging economic times.

Substantial foreign investment

The foreign investment attracted by second residence and citizenship programs represents in some cases the equivalent of the GDP of the countries offering such instruments. Finance Ministers and cabinet leaders are already comparing financial support packages from IMF with investment and revenue influx from such programs, which in some cases seem more advantageous for the countries.

Competitive market

Today, there are 20 countries competing to attract wealthy global citizens.This number is expected to double in the next 5 years and foreign investment from this industry may grow globally by 20%.

Transparency required

Although many countries have employed such programs, not all share publicly clear statistics on the exact number and extent of foreign investments they have received. Some countries like Canada, UK, USA, and Australia disclose publicly and use the numbers to run economic analysis on the impact of those investments. The need of such analyses had been identified and the GCF is taking the challenge to undertake the research per region and to share the findings during at the 2014 edition in Canada.

Connecting the dots

One of the major conclusions of the Global Citizen Forum is that the industry needs an international organization to enhance the communication and the interaction between all relevant stakeholders, as well as to support the sustainable development of the global citizen movement and to enhance the exchange of good industry practices and to promote transparency. The Global Citizen Forum is taking this challenge and commits to help the creation of a special advisory group as part of the GCF that will include government officials, ultra high net worth investors and representatives from each industry: financial intermediaries, lawyers, due diligence firms, wealth expert as well as tax and estate planners. This body will serve as pan-industry regulator and will make recommendations to public administrations in order to achieve greater transparency and support the creation of local regulators of the intermediaries.