Around 470 foreign nationals successfully applied to enter the UK on a "Tier 1 investor visa’" in 2012 (source: Home Office). Such investors must deposit at least £1 million ($1.5 million), to be invested in gilts, UK bonds or UK equities. London & Capital said that since it created its speciality division last November, it has met around 180 professionals, in turn generating a pipeline of around 30 investor visa cases at varying stages of completion – equating to around 6 per cent of the market based on 2012 figures.

“An advantage of a firm like London & Capital is that we all sit about 25 feet from each other so depending on what sort of issue comes up we can deal with it by talking to the right person. The team here is new but the processes we apply are not,"  Mark Estcourt, head of immigration, who joined the firm last autumn, told this publication in a telephone interview.

Two thirds of London and Capital’s clients are from overseas so the firm is well used to dealing with cross-border and international client issues as a matter of course, he said.

“The want to see where the money is but verifying the source of money is something left up to the financial services industry, such as for the purpose of anti-money laundering. We spend a lot of time looking at the background of a client and his/her money. We have a 'comprehensive and detailed risk assessment process'," he said.

“We had a Chinese lady with a factory in Mainland China and headquarters in Hong Kong who was looking to come to the UK because the factory makes parts for a European manufacturer. She wanted to pay herself a dividend from the Hong Kong business; we needed to look at her company accounts and be satisfied about the details,” Estcourt said.

He pointed out that, for the purpose of visas, the 90-day period in which visa applications must be completed will start either from the day a person has entered the UK or from the day that a passport was stamped.