The realistic end-to-end timeline for a clean Caribbean CBI application in 2025 is 5–8 months, not the headline 3–4. Three things drive the variance:
1) Document gathering. Police certificates from some jurisdictions can take 6–10 weeks. Multi-country backgrounds (which most international applicants have) extend this materially. We typically pre-build the document checklist on day one so this runs in parallel.
2) Due diligence. The Caribbean CBI Units now operate three-tier checks (basic, enhanced, source-of-funds) and shared databases. Anything flagged at tier-1 typically adds 6–10 weeks. Self-employed applicants and those with complex corporate structures should plan for tier-2.
3) Approval queues. After the 2024 harmonisation, the Caribbean 5 publish processing-time targets but actual queue times vary by month. The November–February window is usually faster.
The "3–4 month" figure is genuinely achievable for vanilla applications with clean docs and no DD friction — it just isn't the modal case.
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