The Securities and Investment Business Act (SIBA) — British Virgin Islands

SIBA is the BVI's gateway statute for the whole investment-services industry: it defines what counts as "investment business", prohibits carrying it on without a licence, and provides the framework under which the BVI's fund products (professional, private, incubator and approved funds) and their functionaries are regulated. For the funds world its importance is structural — the mutual-fund and manager provisions, and the sub-regimes made under it, all hang off SIBA's licensing perimeter and its definitions of "investment activity" and "investment business". Get caught by those definitions without an authorisation and you are carrying on unauthorised investment business, an offence under the Act.

Scope and the core mechanism

The Act works in three moves. First, it defines the perimeter — "investment activity" and "investment business" (ss.3–4), by reference to the investments and activities listed in its Schedules. Second, it prohibits carrying on investment business in or from within the BVI without a licence (s.4), and sets the licensing, supervision and enforcement machinery around that. Third, it carries the mutual funds provisions and the powers under which the detailed fund rules (the funds Regulations and the Regulatory Code) are made. The full section-by-section text — definitions, licensing, the conduct and enforcement powers, and the fund-specific provisions — is searchable clause-by-clause through the regulation graph and ask-the-law.

The gotcha: the licensing trigger is the activity, tested against the Schedules, not your label — a manager or arranger can be inside "investment business" without thinking of itself as a "securities firm". Map your activity to the Schedule definitions before you assume you are outside SIBA.