Client story
Client's background
Where they started
The client's assets were structured as is typical for affluent families: a significant portion of assets were held in a Swiss trust. This is a legitimate and common instrument for asset protection and wealth succession, and the client planned to finance the Portuguese fund investment from this trust.
Why the standard route did not work
The complexity lay in the fact that for compliance purposes, a payment "from a trust" is not the same as a payment from a personal account. The fund's bank and AIMA must understand the structure: who is the settlor, who is the beneficiary, who manages the trust, and where the trust's capital originated. Without this, the payment risks being held up, and the application could receive information requests.
What BRIDGES had to solve
The client was concerned that the trust would turn the process into endless correspondence or derail it altogether. In reality, the problem was not with the trust itself—it was legitimate and transparent—but rather that its structure needed to be properly and fully disclosed, not circumvented by routing money through alternative channels.
Why a standard answer would not do
At BRIDGES, the client came to have the trust properly disclosed: showing compliance the entire chain up to the beneficiary and source of capital, and processing the payment to the fund without complications.
Most of my assets are in a Swiss trust, and I wanted to pay for the investment from there. I immediately felt the bank tense up: from a trust—meaning, prove who is behind it and where the money comes from. Igor and his team assembled the entire trust structure, disclosed the beneficiary and capital source so thoroughly that there were no remaining questions. The payment went through, I completed the subscription, and I received the Residence Permit. The trust turned out not to be an obstacle, but simply something that needed to be honestly shown in full.
