Offshore Savings and Investment

When we read that expats repatriate a considerable proportion of their wealth for long-term investment, we were surprised.  There are often so many reasons for an expatriate not to send their money home, so we decided we’d better highlight the 5 main reasons why expats should go offshore.

Naturally enough, when it comes to your money it’s a case of ensuring any savings and investment path is absolutely appropriate for your personal circumstances.  Therefore the following 5 main benefits of saving and investing offshore are also the most generally achievable.

If you want to ensure you’re doing the best for your own money’s management, and your long-term financial status, you owe it to yourself to explore the offshore financial opportunities that exist.  Do so with qualified advice, and see whether you could enjoy some of the following 5 main benefits of going offshore.

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Portfolio bonds have been around for many years.  They are wrapper-style solutions offered by many of the main life assurance companies, banks and financial services providers.  Portfolio bond benefits are so broad and almost all encompassing for many expats, so we thought we’d take a closer look at them for you today.

In the past we’ve discussed how a portfolio bond can save you money potentially, however there are perhaps even greater benefits associated with how diverse your included investments can be.

What’s more, there are tax benefits available to some expatriate investors, not to mention flexibility and simplification benefits.  Read on to discover whether a portfolio bond could benefit you.

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Investing money shouldn’t cost you money, but it invariably does.  From fees charged for establishing an offshore savings account for example, to ongoing annual charges for managing an investment solution.  We all see a certain percentage of what we invest eroded by costs.

However, there is a way to save and invest across a very diverse base of assets and not incur massive costs.  If you hold elements of your financial portfolio within a wrapper-style structure, called a portfolio bond, you could save yourself a fortune in fees.

But that’s not the only way a portfolio bond can save you money, there are tax-saving possibilities available to many expats who use offshore portfolio bonds  as we will now explain.

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The rules for financial advice giving in the UK are about to change significantly.  From December 2012 advisers will no longer be able to accept commission payments, and as a result some UK IFAs seem particularly disaffected.

Rumours abound about how many advisers will leave the business because advice giving may no longer be profitable.  In the meantime, misinformation is being spread via expat forums and living abroad websites about how financial advisers working with expats will be affected.

Some of this misinformation is being spread because of a lack of understanding about the new rule changes in the UK, and how offshore financial advisers are actually regulated.  But some is as a result of UK IFAs effectively giving expats bad offshore financial advice.  They are basing what they say on their own new set of circumstances and this is dangerous and wrong.  Expats need to beware…

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The latest cost of living data from Mercer shows that professional expats living and working in some of the world’s leading cities are often exposed to extremely high costs.  Naturally this can make saving money each month very hard indeed.  However, in these almost unprecedented times of economic uncertainty, we’re all under pressure to ensure we have some money saved for a rainy day.

If you’re wondering how on earth to cover your costs and still manage to put something away, we have some little known ways to save more offshore that will see you banishing debts, securing your financial position, and feeling much more confident about your money matters.

We will discuss how you can get the best interest rates offshore, how you can get out of debt more quickly, how you can make the most of your expatriate position to save more offshore, and how ultimately you can ensure you’re working towards building a solid offshore savings and investment portfolio.

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When QROPS (qualifying recognised overseas pension schemes) were introduced back in 2006, their potential should have been immediately apparent.  Here was a solution to effectively free up the pension pots and the wealth ambitions of thousands of Britons living, working or planning to retire abroad.  However, when has anything associated with pensions ever been that simple?

The scandals that have plagued this entire corner of the financial services industry have served to taint any legitimate amendments and improvements made to pensions, such as the introduction of QROPS.  People find it very difficult to trust changes to pension rules or those who offer advice about retirement financial planning as a result.

Unfortunately those associated with the QROPS industry haven’t exactly helped.  As we highlighted in our recent report ‘QROPS: Legitimate Offshore Pensions Not Tax Avoidance Solutions,’ those who have attempted to flout the rules and/or manipulate them for unacceptable means have resulted in QROPS pension warnings becoming common.  If you want to avoid the threat of losing over half your pension pot by getting it wrong when you transfer your pension offshore, what should you do?

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It’s a fact that encountering financial problems is the main reason why expatriates fail to make a new life abroad.  There are 5 main ways that expats lose money when they relocate, and in this article we identify them in a bid to protect you from them.

In these exceptionally tough economic times it’s not surprising that increased numbers of Britons want to escape the UK: as discussed in a Place in the Sun’s article ‘One in Three Brits Would Work and Live Abroad.’  However now more than ever, would-be expats have to tread carefully to secure their financial footing before making the move.

If you’re planning a relocation or you’ve recently made the move and you want to ensure you remain living abroad and loving your new life, here are the 5 ways expats lose money and how to avoid making the same mistakes…

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And yet we read headlines about ‘smash and grab QROPS’ in the FT and the fact that there are just too many QROPS to choose from, making an adviser’s job too difficult according to IFAonline. Perhaps it’s just a case of publications sexing up rumours to salaciously titillate readers!

The fact of the matter is, many schemes that are listed as QROPS are not available for UK pension transfers and so do not even have to be considered by an IFA, and as long as you understand the fact that in order to be

qualifying recognised overseas pension schemes, these solutions have to follow the British pension ideal, you won’t go far wrong.

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Have you seen it said that you can get better rates of interest offshore, only to then compare and contrast the rates on offer with an internet search and discover that actually, offshore interest rates are no better than those available onshore?

Okay, so perhaps without the deduction of taxation at source you’ll enjoy better gross returns, but most expats live in a nation where at least some tax is payable on their saved and invested wealth, and so this benefit is hardly enough to attract people to move their money to chase a potentially slightly better return.

The fact of the matter is, if you do want to get the best rates offshore you invariably cannot go direct to a given bank or building society and ask to sign up and become their customer.  There is a genuine reason why financial advisers can often offer better interest rates on offshore savings solutions – as we will now explain.

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At the start of the year there was much speculation about the way interest rates might rise in the UK; the general consensus of professional opinion was that they would be hiked before year-end and bring misery to mortgage holders and relief to hardworking savers and investors.  The fact of the matter is however, the UK’s economy is still not strong enough to cope with rate rises just yet…

As a result, increasing numbers of onshore and expat savers are looking offshore to see if they can get better rates of return on their hard earned wealth from the international banks and building societies.  However, higher rates are not immediately obvious and it leads one to the question: ‘how can I get the best rates of interest offshore?’

The fact of the matter is, there are certain steps you can take to ensure you’re getting the most for your money, and expats do have an advantage when it comes to getting more offshore…read on to find out.

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