Managing Your Finances

Managing Your Finances

Simply managing your finances and planning for the future can involve a bewildering amount of knowledge and expertise that many of us do not have the time to learn. Add to this the extra difficulties encountered by expats who must face these challenges in a foreign country and the role of an International Financial Advisor (IFA) soon becomes clear.

The Montpelier Group is one such company which has been advising clients in Asia and Europe on how best to manage their money for many years. With offices in Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing as well as a European division in the UK and Geneva, they are the one of largest independent financial advisory companies in South-East Asia with 1.9 billion dollars under their management.

The origins of Montpelier Group lie in the UK with a ‘tax guru’ who envisioned a service which would bring together specialist tax information and traditional financial services – and this is exactly what Montpelier has become. This means that Montpelier can offer their clients financial advice on two levels – ‘wealth creation’ and ‘wealth protection’. These include things such as how to take advantage of offshore banking, how to open a bank account abroad, retirement planning, insurance advice and tax minimisation.

A key aspect to Montpelier’s services is its ‘In house Portfolio Management’ scheme which involves clients’ investments being actively managed by financial analysts who will work to increase the portfolio’s growth potential. It’s basically a grand term for lump-sum investors – people who already have money invested but may be dissatisfied with their levels of returns and who may wish to put it into some kind of investment portfolio. Once you have a personal portfolio you can do anything you like with it, from holding it in cash to putting it into an emerging markets fund, commercial property, stocks or gold, to name a few examples.

Clients can then also access their portfolio details from anywhere in the world via an online portfolio management service linked to the company’s website. From here they are free to move funds around as they wish, but most will have chosen to use Montpelier specifically for its team of portfolio managers who can offer professional advice before any decisions are made.

Another area that has been raising a great amount of interest recently is QROPS. More Britons are choosing to work and retire abroad than ever before, for most that means transferring their UK pensions into overseas schemes. If you are in this position or thinking about retiring overseas, then you really need to understand one key phrase: qualified recognised overseas pensions scheme or QROPS for short. However although they offer fantastic advantages for the growing number of expats, few people really know what they are.

Put simply QROPS are those schemes that the government and HM Revenue & Customs recognises as suitable for expats living, working and paying tax abroad. If you are in this situation then you can find yourself paying taxation penalties from several sources that could significantly harm your overall pension pot, this is where these schemes come into their own.

The biggest problem with living and working abroad is that you lose the right to tax relief on pension contributions to your scheme in the UK. While you cannot regain that relief there are a number of other potential benefits on offer.

Most schemes allow you to take a 25-30% Tax free lump sum, this is as laid out by the HMRC, as the HMRC requires that 70% remains to provide an income at any time after the age of 55 (this recently increased from 50 for any transfers that were not completed by April 2010)

Since April 2006, the procedure for overseas transfers has been simplified considerably. Now, as long as HMRC recognises the scheme as a QROPS, it should be possible to process the transfer in the same way as a UK pension scheme while maintaining all the benefits. However, the process can still prove difficult for those who do not know or understand the territory. Many people have found the entire process far more difficult to navigate than they had previously thought. This is where Montpelier’s expertise applies, they have a resident pension expert who will be able offer professional advice to ensure that you are receiving the most profitable, tax efficient, retirement income.

For more information please contact thailand@montpeliergroup.com or call +66 (0) 2 661 5150.

http://www.montpeliergroup.com/