Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the possibility of a review of the financial criteria associated with Thai Retirement Visa status. The notion of this came to my attention via pattayamail.com, the article is titled: Thailand to Amend Immigration Rules to Lure One million Wealthy Foreigners. This specific aspect came to my mind. "It is understood the Government Review will also encompass regular retirees with one year extensions of stay requiring a modest monthly income or cash deposits in a Thai Bank." In the context of this video, they are basically saying it is understood by the author that the Government's overall review of the situation will also encompass standard retirees and their financial criteria. I think the hope is that this might be modified in such a way to allow more folks to be able to retire in Thailand, perhaps lower income folks, folks that have less monthly income or less of a bank balance.

To the viewers of this video I would say probably don't hold your breath on that. It is possible. I certainly can tell, you can for lack of a better term, feel that policy makers are looking for ways to attract, not just tourists but even expats to Thailand and this may be a way of doing that. This may be a way of getting some more people in. Certainly tightening up the rules regarding Retirement Visas did have tremendous impact on the amount of expats that were living in Thailand. We saw, I won't say it was an exodus, but we did see a lot of folks decide to up and leave.

Again, how this progresses remains to be seen. I wouldn't presume that we will see big changes here. It is possible there may be some minor alterations, I won't say it will be cosmetic but maybe a few things that make the retirement status a little more attractive here but I don't think fundamentally we are going to see major change with respect to the financial criteria associated with Retirement Visas any time in the relatively near future.