Lim joins the firm from HSBC, where she has been involved in the bank’s investor visa business over the past seven years.
Originally from Hong Kong, Lim has been resident in the UK for the past 18 years, and is fluent in both Mandarin and Cantonese, according to London & Capital (L&C), which announced her appointment yesterday.
London & Capital head of immigration Mark Estcourt noted that the current global economic and political climate has meant that growing numbers of families around the world are viewing the UK as a "safe haven", and are looking to move there under such schemes as the Tier 1 investor visa programme.
Tier 1 investor visas are specialist visas designed to attract wealthy individuals to the UK, by enabling them to remain in the country on a long-term basis in exchange for making a significant investment in its investment markets. They are seen as a stepping stone to British citizenship. The visas were introduced in 2008, and their take-up increased sharply in 2011, when the rules were changed to encourage more people to apply.
Estcourt said L&C had a history of working with such international individuals, having "been working with non-doms for more than 20 years now".
With more of the immigrants than previously coming from China and the Greater Asia region, Lim’s language skills, as well as her own personal experiences as an immigrant coming to live in the UK, "will be put to good purpose", he added.
L&C’s announcement of its appointment of Lim came two days after Chancellor George Osborne, during a trip to China, announced that Britain is to relax its visa requirements for Chinese business executives and tourists, as part of the Government’s efforts to promote Chinese investment in the UK.
As reported, in May, L&C said that it’s then-six-month-old Immigration Investment and Wealth Planning division, launched in 2012 to cater for high-net-worth immigrants to the UK, was off to an “impressive start”, and that it had handled an estimated 6% of the so-called Tier 1 investor visa cases that were recorded during that six-month period.
