Stay away from any product offered by Standard Bank, or any other local bank, for that matter. A surefire way to lose money hand over fist, because the fee structure will kill you. The only bank that has a viable product is Barclays, where you deal directly with the offshore bank. Now, since you have no plans to repatriate the money, great (else I would advise you not to bother with offshore funds). The question now is where you actually plan to invest, so that you have the right currency to start with. Else you lose money changing from ZAR to your bank currency, and again changing from that currency to the one you want to invest in. Assuming US$, the 3rd question is active or passive portfolios. If you are actively trading, you will need an account with something like Ameritrade in the US (don't know if the UK has an equivalent). If you want unit trusts, you will need to start with some fairly sizable positions, since UK funds don't operate with anything else than 10k pounds, from what I recall. Even then, 10k buys you the bottom end of the barrel, as the top performers only work with big numbers. Best is to open a brokerage account somewhere and do it the Buffet way (pick one or 2 good quality blue chips) or the ETF way - which I am sure you will find with a google search.