FTA: How do you juggle working in different jurisdictions?
PB: We are regulated in every country we work in and we have suitable individuals in place that meet the local regulators' requirements for a suitably authorised person.
Our businesses are all run locally, they run under our brand and we own either all of them or a majority stake in them but they run as individual units.
FTA: Have you benefited from the end of passporting, given you still operate locally?
PB: We have had clients [approach us] from other firms and we are actively buying books of expat business. A lot of UK firms have been told by their compliance department that they can't look after a client who's now overseas.
We don't agree with that because quite simply if they've been advised by us to set up a Sipp for example, and they move abroad, they're not going to find anybody abroad who is qualified to advise them on that Sipp.
We have a contract with them to provide ongoing service so we will provide that service. We also have professional indemnity insurance that covers us for that.
FTA: Have you heard about insurers or banks withdrawing their services from clients over passporting issues?
PB: We've heard anecdotally of that situation but it doesn't really touch us. We've also heard of some UK providers for example refusing to pay a client's pension into a European bank account. And we think that's wrong, we don't think that's a sustainable position.
FTA: What are the main areas expats tend to seek advice on?
PB: Mainly their questions are about what they've left behind in the UK. I would say 90 per cent of the enquiries are about what they've left back in the UK or they're planning to move abroad and they want to know what to do with what they're leaving behind in the UK.
For example, we've helped people move their assets to Australia as we have an office there and were able to advise them on the tax rules there, about when to move the money, and the tax implications, and the time period in which to move the money to avoid unnecessary taxation.
But we probably do more business in America than in other countries. You can't transfer a pension to America, so a lot of Brits in America want their pension looking after.
We have our own US dollar-denominated Sipp, so if we have a client in America they can have their pension in a Sipp, invested in dollars with the benefits paid in dollars, so they don't have to suffer the exchange rate risks. That's been very popular.
