Hong Kong is home to 179,000 millionaires as of 2018 according to Credit Suisse wealth report. The unrest in Hong Kong is driving more millionaires in search of wealthy countries offering high quality of live, safety and political stability. UK is one them.
The UK golden visa scheme dubbed as tier1 investor visa is one of the most popular golden visa scheme in the world attracting rich HNW millionaires who can invest atleast £2m. The UK golden visa scheme is also the fastest golden visa scheme in the world, with processing times taking 1-3 weeks, compared to US, Canada where there are years of wait and subjected to quotas. UK do not impose any quotas for tier1 investors.
The New visa report released by Home office, shows there has been a spike in UK tier1 investor visa applications from Hong Kong despite Brexit chaos.
So far in 2019, Home office (HO) received 26 applications from Hong Kong alone, investing atleast £2m in the UK.
- Q1 2019 – 10 applications (HK)
- Q2 2019 – 10 applications (HK)
- Q3 2019 – 6 applications (HK)
In the third quarter of 2019, the Home office received 49 tier1 investor applications from main investors
Hong Kong investors second in table behind China along with US citizens. Assuming £2m invested per Hong Kong applicant, this year £52m invested in the UK from Hong Kong alone.
The HO data also shows From 2015 to 2019 (Q3), a total of 56 main investors from Hong Kong have been granted extensions, who previously applied under UK tier1 investor scheme.
Every year Home office receives more than 300 citizenship applications from Hong Kong alone. This shows there is great interest from HK nationals becoming UK citizens.
With Hong Kong already having a powerful passport with visa free access to 168 countries including UK, Canada, Russia, it makes sense for Hong Kong investors applying for golden visa schemes, instead of CBI schemes.
UK has always been a prime destination for millionaires due to renowned reputation for high standards of living, excellent universities for education, world class healthcare system and citizenship perk after five years of living.
