The number of companies formed annually in the Virgin Islands dropped 4.7 percent in 2014, reflecting a slide that began in 2011 but that appears to have leveled off in the second half of last year.
According to recently released statistics from the Financial Services Commission, formation agents incorporated 11,436 companies during the fourth quarter of 2014, a 0.05 percent increase over the same period during the previous year. But figures for the entire year totaled 50,834, a decrease of 4.7 percent compared to 2013.
The slide brings the total number of active companies in the VI to roughly 458,000 as of Dec. 31, 2014. At the end of 2011 — the best year for incorporations since before the global recession began in 2008 — there were more than 481,000 active companies on the corporate registry.
Company incorporations are the mainstay of the territory’s financial services industry, but in recent years policymakers have encouraged the development of other specialties like fund registration and insurance. Both of those sub-sectors grew during the fourth quarter of 2014, with seven new captives and 43 investment funds formed.
But both sub-sectors have suffered declines in recent years. At the end of 2014 there were 2,142 active funds in the territory, down from 2,590 at the end of 2011. Similarly, there were 145 active captive insurers at the end of 2014 compared to 174 at the end of 2011.
Two relatively new areas of business — registering investment managers in the territory and licensing investment businesses to be regulated here — continue to grow from small bases. The Q4 statistics indicate there are 55 investment managers registered here as of Dec. 31, up from zero in 2012. The investment business sub-sector was created by the House of Assembly’s 2010 passage of the Securities and Investment Business Act. The FSC has licensed 529 active investment businesses as of Dec. 31.
{fcomment}