Cocktail, art & forum events in Antibes & Monaco

From pension transfers into beneficial QROPS to careful tax planning, expats have a lot to consider so that they can be financially confident and live their life abroad to the fullest.

But with Brexit looming, there are other considerations afoot. For example, should expats keep their British citizenship or apply for nationality in their new expat homeland? And according to new statistics, it appears that the Brexit referendum result has had a significant effect on the number of Britons gaining citizenship elsewhere in the EU.

Figures from Eurostat, the EU’s statistics agency, show a substantial surge in the number of Britons acquiring citizenship in other EU countries between 2015 (2,478) and 2016, when the number more than doubled to 6,555 – that’s an increase of 165 percent. The figures include both those who chose to adopt dual citizenship, so that they kept their British citizenship, as well as those who renounced it.

There’s quite a buzz around pensions at the moment – and rightly so, as they provide the backbone of our income in our later years. But currently, pension deficits are hitting the news, and figuring them out can still prove difficult.

Pension deficits concern what are commonly known as “final salary pensions” or Defined Benefit schemes.   Final salary or defined benefit (DB) schemes are essentially occupational pension schemes that provide a set level of pension at retirement, the amount of which normally depends on your service and earnings at retirement or in the years immediately preceding when you retire. Because your pensionable salary is used as one part of the formula in order to calculate your pension, a final salary scheme is commonly referred to as a ‘salary related’ scheme. Two common examples of ‘final pensionable salary’ would be your last year’s pensionable earnings or an average of your last 3 years’ pensionable salary.

Recently, there have been high-profile failures of these systems, such as the folding of Monarch Airlines – and the collapse of their pension fund. Initially, it appeared that owners could still walk away with a profit (after new hands tried to turn the airline into a more accessible and “Ryanair-like” product) by offloading debts, and this included dropping the pension fund. Ironically, this was once a major credit to the business. The fund, which is now in the Pension Protection Fund (PPF), had been under speculation of being left short when the business first began to struggle back in 2014, after years of asset-stripping.