For Dominicans living abroad who already have deep ties to their home country, the decision to commit significant capital to local investments feels like a natural next step. Consider a Dominican resident of New York holding $100,000 to invest: she already owns property in the Dominican Republic, regularly sends remittances to family, and has a clear, grounded understanding of the nation’s growth trajectory. She wants to turn her existing connection into active, direct participation in the country’s economic expansion. But when she sets out to make that investment, she quickly hits an unexpected, systemic gap.
Countless doors open to her: local banks are ready to set up an investment account, real estate developers are eager to sell property, brokerage firms offer a range of investment products, government agencies highlight tax incentives for foreign investors, and private entrepreneurs pitch their growing businesses. Every actor in the ecosystem is prepared to claim a slice of her interest, but none are willing to take end-to-end responsibility for guiding her from initial curiosity to a completed, successful investment. This unaddressed gap, experts argue, is one of the most critical unmet challenges in the Dominican Republic’s engagement with its global diaspora.
For decades, the Dominican government and private sector have built increasingly robust systems to draw in diaspora capital. National policymakers track billions in annual remittances, run widespread campaigns to promote second-home property purchases to Dominicans abroad, design specialized financial products for overseas residents, host cross-border investment forums, and encourage local firms to seek out investors in major diaspora hubs from New York and Miami to Boston and Madrid. But attracting investor interest is a very different capability than converting that interest into tangible, productive investment. Right now, the system splits the investment journey into disconnected pieces, with no single entity owning the full process from start to finish.
This disconnect is not a new observation. Miguel Cohn, who now leads the investment advocacy group ProDiáspora, encountered the problem repeatedly during his tenure leading the first Trade, Tourism and Investment Section of the Dominican Consulate in New York. Day after day, Dominicans based in the U.S. approached him with interest in everything from commercial real estate to local startup investments, but their first question was rarely about projected returns, tax structures, or market yields. It was far more fundamental: Who can I trust with my money?
Cohn explains that most of the individual actors required for a functioning diaspora investment ecosystem already exist. Banks handle one narrow slice of the process, developers manage another, government agencies promote investment incentives, capital market firms structure investment vehicles, local businesses seek outside funding, and community organizations mobilize diaspora communities. The problem lies in the unregulated, unorganized space between these actors. Each institution only owns its small part of the journey, leaving no entity accountable for guiding the investor through the entire end-to-end process. This is not merely an inconvenience for overseas investors; it is a major economic bottleneck that stifles growth.
From an investor’s perspective, the Dominican Republic’s investment ecosystem does not look like a clean organizational chart. It looks like a sequence of high-stakes decisions: Which counterparties are actually credible? What investment opportunities align with my risk profile? How do I compare different options fairly? Can I complete all required financial processes remotely, without traveling back to the country? Who verifies that an opportunity is legitimate? Who helps me understand and mitigate the risks? How do I actually close the transaction and secure my investment?
Every unnecessary handoff between uncoordinated institutions creates another opening for investor confidence to erode into caution, and caution to turn into complete inaction. As a result, the Dominican Republic does not face a shortage of diaspora capital – it faces a *diaspora conversion problem*, where existing interest and capital never turn into productive domestic investment.
This contradiction has long played out in the Dominican diaspora. Dominicans already demonstrate extraordinary economic confidence in their home country: they send more than $8 billion in annual remittances, already own billions in domestic real estate, support local family businesses, maintain domestic bank deposits, and participate in the national economy long before policymakers frame these activities as formal diaspora investment. The real challenge is what comes after these basic, familiar transactions: can an overseas Dominican move from buying residential property to investing in productive local enterprises, from holding bank deposits to participating in domestic capital markets, from sending remittances to making formal equity investments, and from general emotional confidence in the country to investing in large-scale infrastructure, innovative startups, and export-focused businesses? And crucially, can they do all this without being forced to piece together the entire investment process on their own?
It is already clear that the diaspora is willing to participate in national development. The next frontier is building systems to convert that willingness into action. Cohn points to the country’s national Financing for Development Strategy, developed under the broader Integrated National Financing Framework, as evidence that diaspora investment has finally entered mainstream national development planning. The strategy correctly identifies key barriers: low financial inclusion for diaspora investors, the underutilized economic potential of remittances, the need for specialized financial products, co-investment mechanisms, and even a pilot program for a diaspora bond issuance.
But existing on paper is not enough to turn planning into productive capital. A well-designed financial product will never become a reliable investment pathway if the institutional ecosystem around it does not work. A diaspora bond can be structured perfectly on paper, but it will still underperform if investors cannot navigate the surrounding institutional processes with confidence. The missing piece is not the investment instrument itself – it is the conversion infrastructure that surrounds the instrument and guides investors to the finish line.
Before the government or private sector launches another new diaspora investment product, platform, summit, or initiative, Cohn argues that policymakers should run a simple, practical test: take one real overseas Dominican investor with available capital, and see if the current system can guide them through three non-negotiable gates.
The first gate is trust: can the investor easily identify credible institutions, legitimate investment opportunities, and reliable counterparties without relying solely on personal family connections, word-of-mouth referrals, or costly trial and error? The second gate is pathway: is there a clear, pre-defined route that connects financial account opening, opportunity selection, third-party verification, compliance checks, and all the institutional steps required to complete the investment? The third gate is transaction: does the process actually end with a completed, measurable productive investment in the domestic economy?
If the system fails at any of these three gates, it does not have a complete diaspora investment mechanism – it only has disconnected components. This is a critical distinction, because no single institution can replace the coordinated system that connects them. A large local bank may pass the trust test, but it has no clear pathway for investors to access small and medium productive enterprises. A government investment agency may identify high-potential opportunities, but it does not manage the end-to-end financial transaction. A private investment platform may have a menu of products, but it lacks a trusted onboarding process that Diaspora investors will rely on. A local entrepreneur may desperately need capital, but may not have prepared their business to meet the due diligence requirements of outside investors.
The problem is rarely that individual institutions are failing on their own. The failure almost always happens in the unowned handoffs between them.
This gap is what makes ProDiáspora’s emerging model so noteworthy. Cohn does not argue that his organization should replace existing banks, regulators, private companies, universities, capital market institutions, or government agencies. Instead, he is betting that ProDiáspora can serve as a central convergence point for all these actors: helping coordinate cross-institutional conversations, pinpoint systemic bottlenecks, route investors toward pre-vetted credible partners, and strengthen the entire journey between initial investor interest and a completed transaction.
Whether ProDiáspora ultimately takes on this full coordinating role, shares it with other public and private partners, or simply catalyzes the creation of a broader national institutional mechanism remains to be seen. But there is no question that the gap the organization is trying to fill is very real. Cohn proposes starting small, rather than rolling out another grand national policy announcement: launch a measurable pilot program. Identify credible, high-potential productive investment opportunities, prepare local firms to receive outside capital, select a small initial group of diaspora investors, track each transaction from start to finish, and document exactly where frictions emerge. This incremental approach matters because before building a national “highway” for diaspora capital, policymakers need to know exactly where the first few investors get stuck.
The lesson here extends far beyond ProDiáspora. Any institution that claims to be serious about unlocking diaspora capital should be able to answer one deceptively simple question: What happens after the investor says “yes” to investing? Who greets the investor after they express interest? Who assesses their risk and investment profile? Who curates a list of credible, matched opportunities? Who validates that those opportunities are legitimate? Who owns the end-to-end financial process? Who manages handoffs between institutions? Who notices when an investor drops out halfway through the process? And ultimately, who is accountable if a transaction never gets completed?
If answering these questions requires a multi-committee meeting just to identify who is responsible, that is the problem.
The next generation of diaspora investment policy needs to become far more focused on tracking actual transactions, not just measuring interest. Policymakers should track how many investors enter the system, how many move on to verified opportunities, how many complete due diligence, how many finalize the financial process, and how much productive capital is ultimately deployed into the domestic economy. Most importantly, they need to measure exactly where transactions stall and die. That data is far more useful than any estimate of total potential diaspora interest, because once you know where conversion stops, the institutional problem becomes visible.
The failure could be at the trust gate. It could be a lack of functional remote onboarding for overseas investors. It could be that most local small businesses are not prepared to meet outside investor due diligence requirements. It could be that existing financial products do not match the risk and return expectations of diaspora investors. It could simply be that no one owns the handoffs between institutions. Five different actors could each do their individual job perfectly, and the transaction could still fall apart between them. That is why the core unit of analysis for diaspora investment policy should no longer be the individual institution – it should be the entire investor journey.
For decades, the Dominican Republic has measured its relationship with the diaspora through remittance volumes, tourist visits, property purchase numbers, conference attendance, bank deposit totals, and expressions of emotional connection to the country. All these indicators matter. But the next stage of development demands a harder, more outcome-focused metric: completed transactions. The question is no longer how many Dominicans want to participate in national growth, or how many institutions name the diaspora as a strategic priority, or how many investment forums the country hosts each year. The question is: how much productive capital can actually move from an investor’s initial expression of interest to a completed, verifiable domestic investment?
The Dominican Republic already has what many countries spend decades trying to build: millions of people abroad with deep emotional ties to the nation, existing economic participation, strong professional networks, and a proven track record of putting money into the domestic economy. The scarce asset is not diaspora affection for the country. It may not even be total available diaspora capital. The scarce asset is functional conversion infrastructure that turns interest into investment.
So before policymakers ask the diaspora for more capital, they should answer one simple test: If a Dominican in New York steps forward tomorrow with $100,000 and says “I am ready to invest,” can the country guide her confidently from that first statement all the way to a completed productive transaction? If the answer is not immediately clear, that is where the work needs to start.
