There are hundreds of investment banks in the Caymans, and flights from Miami several times per day. One business involves flying back up to Cuba, and another involves all the investment banks. Of course, it is a pleasant and laid-back place with little crime. Most Caymanians are light-skinned, friendly Black people or perhaps dark-skinned friendly White people. Everyone speaks English, though there is a local patois similar to Jamaican patois that all the locals use. Banking is a big deal, and of course, one needs a good excuse for a trip should the IRS ask, so there are a lot of nice vacation beach hotels there.
Officially, there are two types of financial advisers. One type accepts customers and charges a set fee for managing a portfolio, typically around 4%, but some have a whole bunch of other fees: initial deposit fee, withdrawal fee, account closing fee, inactivity fee.
The other type charges nothing to the investor directly, and gets commissions from the brokerages and load fund families. If you give the adviser $1000, then he invests $950 and gets a $50 commission from the fund manager as a 5% commission: 5% is more or less an average, but some companies charge up to 8% load up front. Some companies charge a load when you withdraw the money as well, and there are often other fees charged by the companies.
What is bad about this is that many of the first sort of adviser will put your money in a load fund, tell you that the load will pay for itself by better performance (as a rule, it won't) tell you that "you get what you pay for", and therefore rake in fees from both the investor as well as the investment company.
All the fees are summarized in the prospectus in language that many people cannot understand, so calling the company before investing is definitely mandatory to not getting ripped off if you see something that looks fishy.
