Due to the revolution that has occurred in financial technology, techniques such as securitisation have been developed which change the risk structure of banks and insurance companies. When conducting such transactions, banks and insurance companies use independent special purpose vehicles (SPV) and many of these are established in offshore financial centres (OFC) . While there is currently a focus on introducing international banking and insurance standards in OFC, there are currently no such standards for SPV. Hence, in this article a comparison will be made between the various SPV that can be established in leading OFC to determine the merits and demerits of using such vehicles for securitisation transactions. It concludes by asserting that there is a need to strengthen disclosure about these SPV in the financial statements of banks and insurance companies in order to maintain financial stability in the international financial and insurance market place.