One of the advantages of offshore banking is banking secrecy that comes with an account opened at offshore jurisdictions. This allows depositors keeping offshore company’s finances or making offshore investments under high degree of confidentiality.
Most tax havens are devoted to protecting client information from unauthorized disclosure. What does the bank secrecy mean? It means that no bank employee has a right to reveal information about customer’s account without a court’s order. Generally norms restricting access to the information is present in the legislation. Violation of this rule is subject to significant fines and even to the imprisonment.
Offshore banking centers tend to enforce laws restricting disclosing client information very strictly, since they are directly linked to the nature of the business they operate. One of the benefits that people seek while opening offshore account is bank secrecy and if it is not preserved accordingly, an offshore jurisdiction risks to lose its business due to heavy competition in this sector.
In many cases obtaining court order is also restricted. Offshore legislation often requires that the crime the court order that was obtained for was punishable by offshore financial center legislation. This greatly enhances banking secrecy, since in most cases disclosing client information is requested for the tax evasion that is not considered as crime in most of offshore jurisdictions.
Although strict banking secrecy policy reduces risk of client information leakage, still there is a possibility that 
such information is disclosed. This usually happens due to depositor that does not treat offshore account in a careful way: he/she may leave trace to offshore account by transferring money to it from onshore account or sometimes even letting everyone know that he/she went offshore. The best strategy to fully utilize benefits of offshore banking is keeping it secret from creditors, governments and even spouses.
Offshore banking jurisdictions with strict legislation towards bank secrecy are: Andorra, Lichtenstein, Panama and Switzerland.