Start your business
in the Cayman Islands

No. You see the full itemized invoice on the payment screen, and nothing is charged until you enter your card details and confirm there. Up to that point you can go back and change your answers, which changes what's on the invoice.

Yes. The $7,500 covers the Registrar of Companies fees for incorporating your exempted company, along with the beneficial ownership filing and the economic substance notification for year 1. There is no separate government invoice at formation. The Registrar's annual renewal in later years sits inside the annual maintenance package.

The $7,500 formation package covers four things: incorporation of the exempted company, your registered business address for year 1, the beneficial ownership filing, and the economic substance notification. Keeping the company alive after that is the annual maintenance package at $3,500 per year, which covers annual maintenance with the Registrar of Companies, registered address renewal, company secretarial compliance, the beneficial ownership filing, and the economic substance notification. Outside both packages: bank account opening, building a real Cayman presence if your activities trigger the full economic substance requirements, audited financial statements or fund-specific regulatory filings, and tax advice where you and your owners are resident. Anything in that last group is scoped and quoted before you commit.

The $7,500 formation fee is one-time. The $3,500 maintenance package is billed annually and keeps renewing for as long as the company exists, so read it as a running cost rather than part of the one-time total. It is required unless another licensed Cayman service provider takes over your registered office and annual filings. You can change services later: if you appoint your own licensed provider, tell your contact and we take maintenance off the plan.

We open the file immediately and you get a named point of contact plus a KYC checklist. Cayman due diligence is heavier than most jurisdictions, so clearing that checklist is the first real step. Once your documents are accepted we run name verification, prepare the constitutional documents, register the exempted company with the Registrar of Companies, file the beneficial ownership information, and prepare your first board resolutions.

Registration itself is quick, as little as one week under normal Registrar processing, and roughly 1 to 2 weeks from the point your KYC clears. KYC collection sits outside that window because it depends on your people, not on us: Cayman wants certified and sometimes legalized documents from every director, shareholder, and beneficial owner. The Registrar controls the filing clock, so we don't promise a calendar date. We clear documents fast and file the moment the pack is complete.

For every director, shareholder, and beneficial owner: certified color copies of a non-expired photo ID and current passport, a certified utility bill in English no older than 3 months, a professional reference or bank letter, a signed source of funds and wealth form with proof, a CV, and a signed FATCA form. If a company will hold the shares, which is normal for a Cayman parent or holding structure, that company also provides certified memorandum and articles, a certified certificate of incorporation, a certified ownership structure chart with percentages signed by a director, certified registers of members and directors, and due diligence on its directors. Start pulling these while the file opens, because certification is usually the slowest part.

No resident director. Cayman does not require a local director for an exempted company, so there is no nominee director cost in this price. Every Cayman company does need a registered office in the islands provided by a licensed local service provider, and your own overseas address does not qualify. That office receives all official correspondence, regulatory filings, and legal notices, and year 1 of it is already inside the $7,500.

A Cayman bank account is not required. The company can bank anywhere in the world. If you want one, you apply directly with the bank and we suggest approaching at least two, because banks won't discuss the opening process with an intermediary. We provide details of suitable banks, send your chosen bank notarized copies of your corporate documents, and draft the board resolutions approving the account. The bank sets its own timeline, which can run several weeks, and its requirements can change without notice.

Cayman obligations attach to the company, not to its income. A dormant exempted company still has to keep a registered office with a licensed local provider, renew with the Registrar of Companies each year, keep its beneficial ownership register current, and file an economic substance notification. Let those slide and penalties accrue, and the company can be struck off the register. Holding vehicles and pre-launch structures are the ones this catches most often.

Your entity gets a compliance calendar listing every deadline it owes, including the Registrar renewal, beneficial ownership updates, and the annual economic substance notification, with status tracking so you can see what's upcoming, done, or overdue. Reminders go out ahead of each due date, an in-house team files what's in your plan, and the confirmation lands in your document vault. If the Cayman company sits above subsidiaries elsewhere, the same dashboard models the parent and subsidiary relationship so the whole structure stays on one source of truth.

Every Cayman company files an annual economic substance notification, and yours is covered, in the formation price for year 1 and in the maintenance package after that. The fuller substance test applies only if you carry on a relevant activity under the Economic Substance Act 2018: fund management, banking, insurance, finance and leasing, distribution and service centre business, headquarters business, intellectual property business, shipping, or pure equity holding. Pure equity holding companies face a reduced test compared with active businesses. If your plans trigger the full requirements, which means genuine physical presence in the islands, we walk you through what that looks like before you commit.