News & Insights

Another year is nearly over with a new one about to begin and while the financial outlook for 2019 looks unclear, one thing we can say with some certainty is that the financial markets have been anything but boring during 2018. Volatility has been at the fore, lately mainly as a result of political uncertainty in Europe and the UK, and the American/Chinese trade war.

On the monetary front, the belief is that US interest rate expectations are peaking and that we will possibly have two more hikes in 2019 at 0.25% each. With little chance of interest rate rises in Europe this will mean little respite for hard pressed savers.

HSBC and The Local Government Pension Scheme are the latest Defined Benefit Pension Schemes to cause upset and worry to thousands of soon-to-be retirees.

Firstly, HSBC has come under fire for cutting the pension payouts of its former staff by up to £2,500 a year, affecting 50,000 members who joined the company between 1975 and 1996. This group had opted to pay less national insurance (NI) contributions whilst working by "contracting out" of the former state pension scheme. This meant that HSBC also paid less NI contributions. In exchange for paying a lower rate, the bank agreed to pay staff a guaranteed minimum pension when they came to retire. Payment records were however not properly maintained leading pensioners to be either overpaid or underpaid. Numerous firms, including HSBC, had used this arrangement and when the errors were discovered, some began to cut pension payouts to compensate for the overpayment.  

Despite the protestations of expats in the Netherlands, expat financial advisers and business leaders, the Dutch cabinet recently announced that it would proceed with plans to reduce the favourable 30% expat ruling from eight to five years.

However, there will now be a transitional period for certain expatriates, meaning they will have time to consult their expat financial advisers in the Netherlands to take the necessary tax planning steps to adjust to the new landscape. Nevertheless, there are still a number of consequences associated with changes to the 30% tax break that need to be explored. Here we will attempt to bring some clarity to those who may be affected by the new rules.

People across Europe and the Western world are living longer than ever before. This is likely to be the result of a combination of many factors – for example, good diet, technological and medical advances. and increased access to healthcare.

However, simply moving to a country with high longevity is, in itself, not enough to confer any benefit.

For example, if you move to Spain but eat a 'Full English' breakfast every day, followed by fish and chips for lunch and roast beef with Yorkshire pudding for dinner, while all the while smoking 20 cigarettes a day and downing several pints of beer every evening, the Spanish climate and great healthcare is probably not going to help increase your lifespan by a particularly significant amount.

Pensions, whether private, workplace or state, are essential to the retirement planning of UK expats all over the world, whether they live as close to the UK as the Netherlands or Norway or as far away as Grand Cayman or the Grand Canyon.

However, around half a million British expats suffer a pensions shortfall of as much as £4,000 a year simply because they have chosen to live in a country or region without a reciprocal agreement with the UK and their pensions have been frozen.

Many of them feel it is unfair that they have no choice but to live on a lesser income or to take steps to redress the situation by consulting their expat financial advisers for inventive solutions. But, things may be about to change as MPs have created a parliamentary alliance to change the expat pensions law.

Few financial decisions are as important to an expat as the question of how and where they invest into a pension scheme.

This is why the Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index is so useful in terms of assessing the adequacy, sustainability and integrity of different nations' pension systems. The 10th edition of the index was recently published and makes for interesting reading from an expat pension perspective.

The top spot in the list of 34 national pension systems was gained by the Netherlands having scored 80.3 – just a tenth of a point ahead of last year's winner, Denmark.

On many occasions, lay investors have a tendency to confuse banking and property revenues as useful gauges of the overall strength of the investment economy. But, however healthy (or unhealthy) these two sectors appear, this should not be allowed to cloud the investment opportunity available to you via your expat financial services manager.

This is why we should not be overly concerned that returns in banking investments currently sit below historical averages – what this potentially marks is simply the residual impact of the 2008 financial crisis and the fact that banking and the wider investment economy have evolved with the advent of new and disruptive players in the finance sector.

For example, a new piece of research by Accenture showed that in 2005 there were 24,000 firms operating in the worldwide banking industry; today this stands at around 15,000. But this alone cannot be seen as a true reflection of the current climate because during the same period we have witnessed the dawn of 600 FinTech firms, 1,900 payment institutions, 700 new banks, and 400 subsidiaries of existing banks – there has also been some consolidation in the area.

Being an expat has many potential benefits and opportunities, but residing abroad also brings with it certain complex financial considerations. In many ways these can be made all the more complicated if you also happen to have foreign husband or wife, particularly in regard to your expat pension planning.

Although in most situations having a foreign spouse is unlikely to affect their possible entitlement to your pension in the event of your death, there are many variables that you should consider as an essential part of your expat financial planning.