Hoxton Life

Pensions for Expats in the GCC: What You Need to Know - with Ravi Gill and Thomas Goldie

• Hoxton Wealth

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Did you know over 240,000 Brits have already made the UAE their home? 🇦🇪

And with over 5,000 British companies operating in the region, the GCC is quickly becoming one of the fastest-growing expat hubs for both individuals and businesses.

So, what does that mean for pensions?

This week, I sat down with Ravi Gill and Thomas Goldie, pensions and retirement specialists at Hoxton Wealth, to dive into the unique challenges and opportunities facing expats in the GCC when it comes to pensions.

We discussed:

  • Why pensions are often your second or third largest asset and need regular reviews.
  • How double tax treaties allow GCC expats to withdraw UK pensions tax-free (a huge advantage!).
  • The benefits of voluntary UK state pension contributions—for just £3 a week, expats can fill gaps in their National Insurance record and secure thousands in extra retirement income. I wonder how many expats in the GCC are missing out on this?

We also touched on Saudi Arabia—is it the next big opportunity? With its rapid growth and increasing expat population, it’s definitely one to watch.

And if you’re a financial planner, you’ll love hearing about the similarities and differences in the UAE. With no employer pension schemes, expats often turn to financial planners for guidance, making the GCC an exciting market for those in our profession.

Ravi and Thomas reminded me of how important it is to start early and review regularly. These small actions are what set you up for long-term financial success.

So, living in the GCC and not on top of your pension? 📉 Reach out to book a meeting today, and let us show you how you can stay updated using the Hoxton Wealth App.

🎧 Whether you’re an expat looking to optimize your pensions or a financial planner curious about opportunities in the GCC, this episode has something for you. 

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Speaker 1:

When you close your eyes and you say the word pensions, it conjures up an image of somebody who's old, right. Today we're going to talk about why pensions matter.

Speaker 2:

It's a tool which will allow you to have freedom and flexibility to stop working.

Speaker 3:

You also need to understand what you think the future is going to look like and work backwards.

Speaker 2:

See, the earlier you can start, the better, primarily due to compound interest, which is classed as the eighth wonder of the world. Most people they're reviewing their health goals, but a lot of people can put finance goals off because it is a bit of a difficult topic.

Speaker 1:

Pension statements come through once a year. That's when you look at it and then you review it and you think about it.

Speaker 2:

If you look at the last two years, the UK versus the US in terms of the stock markets, you could get 5% on the asset growth, but if the currency is going 5% in the other direction, People do also see their pensions historically as a nice legacy planning tool, whereas that's likely to all change then as of 2027.

Speaker 1:

So, ravi, tommy, thanks for joining us today on the Hogsden Live podcast, and today we're going to talk about why pensions matter. So why do they matter, ravi?

Speaker 3:

Go on, Tom.

Speaker 1:

How long have you got? How long have?

Speaker 3:

you got. So I suppose look for most people outside of their property, pensions are usually their biggest asset. You know a lot of our clients have worked in the UK for a long period of time contributing into pensions and for most of them it's going to be a huge part of their retirement planning essentially. So it's really important you look into them.

Speaker 1:

So what is the sort of long-term impact of pension planning? Then sort of let's go into detail on that.

Speaker 2:

So I guess obviously depends on the jurisdiction that you look at, but most of our clients will typically be originally based in the UK. Then they'll move internationally, whether it's the GCC, us, europe and Australia. If you look at how pensions were formed, you know previously most companies used to offer individuals defined benefit pension schemes and that was, you know, one of the ways that they would entice that individual perhaps to come to work with that company. Then over time that got transitioned out and we've got the newer style pensions, although they've been around for quite some time now, which is your defined contribution money purchase schemes. And effectively the way that that works is an individual would pay money into that pension scheme on a monthly basis which will come out of their salary. Then their employer would typically match that and I think if we didn't have that element of structure then there's going to be a big gap and realistically people would likely have to work until they're in their 70s and that then doesn't allow them to have that freedom and flexibility to retire.

Speaker 2:

So I think they're an integral part of somebody's financial plan. So the importance of investing regularly on a monthly basis, it's a given. Unfortunately, clients out here in the gcc, you're kind of left to your own devices and that's where hoxton and you know guys like myself and tom would come in just educating clients. You know the importance of not ensuring that there is two, three, four years of gaps in those provisions. Otherwise you're going to have to either invest aggressively or take a lot of risk to try and bridge that gap, and most individuals aren't comfortable with doing that.

Speaker 3:

Or cut your cloth accordingly or work longer, which probably no one wants to do, right.

Speaker 1:

Well, let's look at the GCC. So people come out here, they might come out here from the UK. They come out and they maybe work for a company. They might even set their own business up. What do they need to consider when it comes to pensions and retirement when working, say, in Dubai, for example?

Speaker 3:

I think, like Ravi said, the importance of saving is absolutely paramount, but you also need to understand what you think your future is going to look like and work backwards. So no, we have people come to us and say how much we need to save, but it's very difficult to understand that if we don't know. You know how old you're going to be when you retire, what jurisdiction you're going to be tax resident in, what level of lifestyle you want, so you know. These are all things that people need to be looking at.

Speaker 1:

Pensions. When you close your eyes and you say the word pensions, it conjures up an image of somebody who's old right. That's what a pension is, isn't it? It sounds old, doesn't it?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, these ads that used to run on the TVs and online now, yeah saga or something like that you know, so when is the right time for somebody to actually consider a pension and when can they start contributing to a pension? I guess the the main importance of that is yes, it's a pension, but it's a tool which will allow you to have freedom and flexibility to stop working. So, although pensions are for most individuals in their 20s and 30s, they don't think of peeing into a pension. You know, I've got a lot of friends back in the uk that asked me you know, should I be paying into my pension right now or should I wait until, uh, later life? So the earlier you can start the better, primarily due to compound compound interest, um, which is classed as um as the eighth wonder of the world to a certain extent.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, the earlier you can start, the better, um, and it just allows you to have that element of freedom and control, um yeah, I used to work for a pension provider and I was always blown away by the fact that the stakeholder pension at the time you were able to set one up for your child, literally as soon as they were born, you could set up a pension plan for your child. Is that still the case?

Speaker 3:

yeah, there's lots of different structures that you can set up. You can set up pensions, you know, junior ices.

Speaker 3:

There's lots of different things, but I think the the main crux of it is that people need to get into good habits and start saving early, um, and it just takes that pressure. I used to use something called the retirement mountain, um, so it's a graph that I used to draw and it essentially showed that you know, the later you start saving, the steeper the mountain gets, ie the more you need to save on a monthly basis or an annual basis, um. So when you highlight these things in that way, it really gets people thinking and you know, understanding that the sooner I do this, the better yes, people can put this off, can't?

Speaker 1:

they don't think about it, and time moves very quickly. I can't believe I'm 43 years old already. Have I got enough in my pension for my retirement? Should I've done it earlier?

Speaker 3:

yeah, definitely I should have done it earlier.

Speaker 1:

So what you know, what are the benefits of those regular reviews of pensions, those regular reviews of assets when it comes to pensions?

Speaker 2:

it's like everything in life. You know you should be reviewing where you are currently right now and now is a perfect time. You know, the beginning of the year, most people they're reviewing their health goals, but you know a lot of people can put finance goals off because it is a bit of a difficult topic. The other consideration is they don't know who to speak to, especially out here. You know, in the UK, as I said, pensions are a given.

Speaker 2:

You might have a pension advisor within your company where most of the companies out here you know they're the global companies and they might not have that element of infrastructure and it can be quite and daunting conversation to have, you know, trying to find regulated and a qualified financial advisor and a trustworthy, worthy, incredible company to deal with. So it can easily be conversation that you can kick down the road. Days, days, weeks, weeks become months and then it could be three, four, five years into your time being out here and unfortunately we've also seen it with clients. We've been out here for seven, eight years. Some individuals have come to us in a worse off position than they originally came here five, six, seven years ago. So the earlier you can have these conversations the better. Typically.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and I think you know if you look at any part of your personal finance, you know most people review them. You know you probably look at your bank account quite regularly. You look at fixed deposit rates quite regularly. You look at your health insurance what that's costing you, life insurance, these types of things but weirdly, people don't look at your health insurance, what that's costing you life insurance, these types of things but weirdly, people don't look at their pensions quite as much. Um, you know I have regularly have have first meetings with people and I'm like when's the last time you looked at this? They even don't, either don't know where their pension is or they don't look at it. You know every one or two years. They look at it every five years, for example. So it's like any asset or any part of your personal finance, you need to be reviewing it and making sure you're in the best possible structure and, essentially, getting the best thing for your money.

Speaker 1:

Well, it's true, isn't it? When it's out of sight, it's out of mind. When pension statements come through once a year, that's when you look at it and then you review it and you think about it. What are Hoxton doing, then, in respect of being able to make the actual review process accessible for clients?

Speaker 2:

so I guess initially we would have a discussion with an individual to understand what types of pensions have they currently got, educate them on the difference between, you know, defined benefit, a defined contribution, a personal pension. Um, you know, it's quite strange actually, how many people don't know who their current pensions are with.

Speaker 2:

You know administrators can chop and change. You know on a regular basis. You know companies get bought out. You know, being out here for five, six, six years, you might have had three, four different types of pots in the uk and there's individuals that may never have never looked at those and never thought that they can actually do anything with them. You know, when you question people in terms of who the pension's with, in terms of administrator, what age can you access your pension? Where is it invested? It's very rare that somebody can answer all of those types of questions again because they get these annual pension statements, which is typically still registered at a UK address, so it might be going to the parent's address, it might get filed away, you know. So it's very unlikely that they'll look at it. So we'll start a process on a non-obligatory basis. We'll write out to the administrator. We'll even help them find out who the current administrator is. There's a service and a tool that we can use through the government website Initially it's just starting with a conversation to understand the mechanics and looking underneath the bonnet really, of that particular structure.

Speaker 2:

Does it match with their current life goals? Does it match with their current risk profile For a lot of clients that are in their 40s and 50s. They might have set these pensions up when they're in their 20s and 30s. The attitude to risk might have completely changed. So it's ensuring that that aligns with your current risk attitude and growth expectations as well. So initially it, and then we would take it from there really to understand what's important. Where does this pension fit into the bigger picture? Is there perhaps going to be any gaps in your retirement provisions? If you don't do anything about this, what are you currently doing whilst you're out here? What should you be doing? It comes down to education. It's not a quick and easy process. Typically, we will have three, four, five meetings, depending on the amount of pensions that somebody's got, um, but yeah, we do it all on a on an obligatory basis, really to see if you can help, if you can any any add any value, um, and then take it from there love it.

Speaker 1:

Tell me the review process being able to get your eyes on how your pension's doing you know, should I be putting more in there? Can I change my retirement date? How does that affect what I might well have paid out um when I choose to change my retirement date? We're a wealth tech company aren't we yep, what have we got that we can do?

Speaker 3:

we can give to clients to help them keep a track on how their pensions we have wealth flow um, which we've spoken about quite a lot um recently, and that is essentially a online tool that we've developed over the last few years where clients can put in all of their assets, all of their liabilities, um how much they expect them to grow by over a period of time. They can put in life events whether it's, you know, children's wedding or going and buying the the car that they wanted to buy income events so we can start putting any defined benefit schemes they might have in or, you know, their UK state pensions, um, and basically plotting out fairly morbid but plotting out what the rest of their life is going to look like and how that helps us is to explain to clients when they can retire, how much they can retire with what their you know, their tax implications are going to be, and we can then start to build out different scenarios for them. That's going to essentially tick all of the boxes, um, rather than just, you know, building assets, and I've spoken to people recently. It's quite nice conversations to have. It's normally you need to save more money, but actually I've had quite a few conversations recently with clients that have been with me for, you know, five, six, seven years now and I'm actually telling them you don't really need to work much anymore, uh, based on your the objectives that you've got.

Speaker 3:

So it's really just helping people through that process and helping them understand what they've got, how their assets can work better for them, how we can structure things in a way that you know they're not paying quite as much tax wherever they decide to be moving forward. So that's something we've implemented into the business and we're finding that what that also does for us, and for clients as well, is it helps them consolidate everything in one place. You know, historically we have always been just pension advisors, but the type of client that we deal with has assets in the US, the UK, europe, australia, and they just want one advisor to look after everything so effectively. When we end up managing all of these assets for people, everything consolidated in one place, and we can put the best plan possible forward to them basically Fantastic.

Speaker 1:

So you're looking after clients that have lived in multiple jurisdictions, multiple countries around the world. Obviously there are complications in respect to a tracking those pensions, transferring pensions and consolidating. So that's something that we do here at hoxton wealth and we're helping lots of clients in the gcc because we have lots of international clients. Lots of people are mobile, moving around. I mean, it's a very uh open world now, isn't it? And you've got to keep track of those pensions, yep exactly, it's good.

Speaker 3:

It's good as well. So there's, you know, the software that we've got. It's, I mean you can can put your pension values and your asset values in manually, and you can also just link them through to the different institutions, whether it's AJ Bell or Aviva or whatever it might be, so clients can log on and it just pulls through their valuation on a daily basis, so they don't have to have hundreds of spreadsheets opened up all the time. They can just look at it wherever they are in the world.

Speaker 1:

Fantastic. If anyone's listen to this right now. They can just download that from the app store. Can't be the hogs. And welfare, it's free, yeah always will be happy days.

Speaker 2:

Um, just in addition to that, what tom mentioned as well, you know the majority of our clients are international people. You know they've got fairly complex situations and, especially in this day and age, you know, if you've, if you rewind to 50 years ago, you know the way that world was developed. It wasn't as easy and freely to travel. Right now, within a couple of hours, you can be in a completely different country and continent fairly easily. And if you look at an individual's career, it spans across 40 to 50 years perhaps sometimes.

Speaker 2:

So it's quite easy for an individual to build up assets in multiple jurisdictions and the big considerations there are currency asset allocation as well. Even, just as an example, you know, if you look at the last two years, the UK versus the US in terms of the stock markets, a lot of clients with UK pensions are quite heavily weighted in UK equities as opposed to. You know, if you look at the US market, the growth on that, especially in recent times with the tech stocks and the AI themes again they're actually putting themselves at risk and jeopardy and leaving potential returns on the table by disregarding these types of assets. And we're just talking about a two-year period there and the variance. But if you span this over a course of, you know, 10, 15, 20 years, it could be quite a substantial difference and then currency risk is really important and that's where we educate clients.

Speaker 2:

you know where do you eventually want to retire. You know if you someone's wanting to retire here or Europe or Australia, as an example and all of their assets are currently in GBP, then you know you could get 5% on the asset growth. But if the currency is going 5% in the other direction, you're in a flat position, although you might actually be in a negative position if you factor in inflation. So, again, a lot of clients don't think about that and it's educating them on that, and that's what the Hoxton Wealth App allows you to do have all of your assets in one place and then link it back to the main currency in terms of where you see yourself going forward.

Speaker 1:

Lovely. I love that Robbie Target date and life cycle funds is a topic of conversation quite recently. For those that don't understand that and how best to approach it. Can you give us a simple explanation?

Speaker 3:

So target date or life cycle funds or age target funds, whatever you want to call them. It's essentially a standardized investment approach that a lot of pension providers know pension providers will have in the uk or in the us, for example. And it's where you tick a box and say I think I'm going to retire at the age of 65, um, and it's a multi-asset structure or, yeah, multi-asset type fund, whereby the closer you get to retirement um, or your target date, we should say the asset allocation moves away from risk assets. So equity is more into government bonds, corporate bonds, money markets, so effectively de-risking and locking in the growth that you've achieved in the earlier days. In principle they work very well for some people but not for everybody.

Speaker 3:

I think they're quite assumptive in just assuming that the pension is somebody's only asset for retirement, whereas realistically, over a long period of time they might build up assets around that, so they might not want to de-risk as they move closer towards retirement. I've come across quite a few clients recently where they're in a stakeholder pension, a target date fund, and they've not reviewed it for a while. They're two or three years away from retiring and they're saying well, why am I only receiving a sort of two or 3% return, when I've actually got a moderate growth or a growth-based attitude to risk. And the reason for that is because they're, you know, and they've missed out on, you know, the S&P doing like 20%, 30% over the last sort of year and a half. So yeah, that's kind of how a lifecycle fund works, but they don't really work very well for everybody.

Speaker 2:

So it's kind of important that people review that. Basically. And the other consideration, especially if you look at clients that are here in the GCC, you know most individuals move to the GCC due to the opportunity and what that opportunity allows them to do is perhaps retire, you know, five, 10 years earlier than 65 or 67, which is the normal retirement date currently in the UK. So, again, looking at the underlying asset allocation, is that in line with your retirement goals and your retirement expectations? I believe is really important, rather than just being in the default option. You know it's not.

Speaker 2:

It's quite rare that people want to just be in a default option and a lot of people think about the markets and some people they understand that, depending on where you're invested, you could get different types of returns from a geographical location and also from an asset allocation standpoint. But it's helping educate people to understand. Is that what you would like? Or would you prefer to have a bit more control, flexibility in terms of where you evidently you know, invest your, your funds, which you know you've worked very hard for and you know, over a 20, 30 year career, it's a pretty sustainable amount of time and, like tom said earlier, the majority of the people that we deal with. You know, their pensions are typically their second or third largest asset, other than their property or investment properties, and disregarding it for years and years probably isn't the most sensible of things to do. And a review only takes, say, a couple of meetings, couple of hours of their time that they would invest into that. So, yeah, it's quite a sensible and wise thing to do, I'd say.

Speaker 3:

I think the world that we live in is quite different as well now, isn't it? And that, you know, people are becoming a lot more savvy in terms of understanding investments. I think the US have led the way in that and I think the UK is following quite nicely. And I have discussions with people all the time. You know, even though we've got our fantastic model portfolio service within, you know, in-house, I have a lot of clients saying actually, tom, you know, I would like a little bit of exposure to sustainable energy and, you know, esg based funds and I'd like to kind of move away from this particular sector or geographical region. And, you know, when you review your pension, it gives you the opportunity to kind of work with us, our internal fund analysts, and build out a slightly more bespoke portfolio, if that's, you know, if that's something that you're interested in as well brilliant.

Speaker 2:

Yeah and yeah. And the other big thing as well is you know if we look at where the market is right now, you know you can still get fairly decent rates on cash and interest rates. You know, if you said to someone you've got £200,000 sitting in your bank account, you know how often would you look at that, review that and look at investment strategies for that. You know it would be fairly regularly. Where again with the pensions, a lot of the time because it's out of sight, out of mind. It can, it can just get that conversation can just get kicked down the road.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I understand that 100 gcc, then we're in the gcc. Our head office is here over in dubai, so let's look at some of the considerations with pensions when it comes to the gcc, do you want to kick things off?

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So obviously we're in a very unique position here. There's no income tax in the GCC, at least at the moment. I'm not sure what that's going to look like moving forward, but without kind of getting into the weeds too much.

Speaker 3:

You know the UK has double tax treaties with all of the GCC countries and there's some huge opportunities that can be accessed off the back of that, one of those being, you know at the moment, uk pension. With it being a UK pension structure. You can draw out 25% of that pension tax-free. The rest of that is generally applicable to income tax. However, if you're living in the GCC I bar Oman if you're a tax resident, oman, it doesn't really work, but everywhere else it basically means that you can lean on the double tax treaty and withdraw your pension completely using the nil tax code um, yeah, not sort of applying for a nil tax code. So that's something that we, I would imagine, are going to continue to do quite a lot of, and restructuring and repackaging people's assets into different structures for their eventual move back to the UK or back to Europe. So that's an opportunity that is very important, I think, for everyone to consider if they're in the GCC and actually tax resident here at the moment.

Speaker 2:

It's quite surprising actually changes in legislation, especially with the recent budget. We've had a lot more inquiries and individuals coming down to the seminars. Often it does take a big change to get in the news and in the press for people to actually start to take action and start thinking about these things, which is obviously a good thing. But you know, we are trying to encourage people to look at these regularly and that's one of the importance of working with an advisor. You know there is a lot of changes that happen in regulation and legislation, so it's really important that you are kept up to date with what's happening and how it could impact your the client's future financial plans. But yeah, like Tom said, there is a potential opportunity for the right individual.

Speaker 2:

For the right individual, it depends on where, again, they're going to retire. For individuals that are going to go back to the UK, especially if they've got other income sources in the UK, for example, full state pension, investment property or any income that they draw from their UK pensions Typically they'll end up paying a basic rate tax on drawdown. So even eradicating that could potentially be a benefit for an individual. And again, it comes down to how large their estate is, but there's a lot of estate planning considerations and a lot of planning that can be done.

Speaker 2:

You know Hoxton tax and the amount of introductions that I've done with them over the last three months has been. I think in the last three months I've done more than I had for the previous nine months of last year. And again it's a good grounding and having that element of service in-house. There's not many international advisory companies that offer that. I have had a lot of individuals that have come to us and used us purely because we've got that tax service and the will's in the states. Otherwise you're dealing with two or three different firms and again it comes down to simplicity and being able to have one group manage your whole estate and your whole investments in-house, which was helpful going forward.

Speaker 3:

Something as well I'll add to that that is pretty topical at the moment is the fact that it was announced in the budget towards the back end of last year that pensions are going to be coming into scope for inheritance tax purposes as of 2027. So, you know, for a lot of the clients that we speak to, although it's there for pension and retirement benefits yeah, sort of income and retirement benefits people do also see their pensions historically as a nice legacy planning tool, whereas that's likely to all change then as of 2027. So there's some really interesting opportunities and some planning that can be done around that as well.

Speaker 1:

In the UAE, in Qatar, you've got Dubai, you've got all these different locations. Is it the same across the whole of the GCSE? Bahrain, all of that, you know. In Saudi Arabia, are we talking? The same rules apply across as?

Speaker 2:

long as there's a double taxation agreement within the UK, obviously we'd speak to the tax team on an individual basis, but primarily your main jurisdiction is that we operate in. You've got your UAE, where you've got Abu Dhabi, dubai and the other five Emirates, and then over in Saudi as well. It's typically quite common for this.

Speaker 3:

The double tax treaties again, it's a conversation for the tax team, but they all cover off lots of different types of tax and they're all very. You know there might be some nuances in there, but they're all worded quite in quite a similar way and that's something that people can lean on, you know, when they are in the GCC.

Speaker 1:

So if someone's interested in this double tax treaty and they want to speak to a tax expert, what would we actually do for that person? First is to maybe sit down with a tax expert within our business.

Speaker 2:

So typically we would have the initial discussion from a financial advisory perspective.

Speaker 2:

So either myself, tom or one of the team, just before we put it into the tax team, understand the client's goals, circumstances, what they're looking to achieve with all of this, to see whether it actually is relevant for it to be referred directly into a tax advisor. So it's more so understanding the client's circumstance first, what type of pensions that they have got. You know, if it is a defined benefit, defined contribution, is it already in a SIP? So it's understanding the structure and then if it is relevant, then we would refer them into the tax team to have that discussion. Again. As I said, it was quite topical at the back end of last year and it will be especially for the next few months because we've got April effectively coming up, which is the tax year in the UK. Whereas if an individual was to completely exit their pension scheme, then they could claim the money back through the tax team as of a return in in april and then typically get the that rebate back within a couple of months or so fantastic.

Speaker 1:

Anything else we should consider in the gcc then?

Speaker 2:

so people listening to this episode right now more than likely are either here yeah or they're thinking about coming over here I think for people that are thinking of coming over here and people that are already here, the biggest consideration is most companies out here don't offer a structured pension scheme. The only jurisdiction typically was down in the DFC where they've got the Jews pension scheme which came about a few years ago. The only type of scheme that they currently have outside of the DFC is something called a gratuity, which is effectively an end of service benefit, and different companies calculate that differently, but typically for every year that you've worked for that company you would get one month of salary when you were to leave. So as an example, if someone's worked for a company for 10 years, they'll get 10 months of salary when they leave. However, the question is what are you doing during those 10 years? You know that's 120 paychecks, which is a pretty significant amount of time, and if there isn't any structure or any kind of discipline during that time again there's going to be a big gap. You know there's no point saving into a pension scheme in the UK up until the age of 45 and then your last 10 years of retirement 45 to 55 there's no structure, because then that might mean you might have to continue working for a few years.

Speaker 2:

And the other big consideration is most salaries out here. Obviously they're tax-free, as Tom mentioned. They're typically a lot higher than they are in the UK and Europe and that's one of the reasons why individuals come out here. So, depending on their, their lifestyle, they should have an element of extra disposable income on a monthly basis. So being able to save regularly should be a lot easier here than in the UK.

Speaker 2:

So the packages, the way that they are built, they're typically left to the individual's own devices. And again it comes back to what is their personal experience. What is their education around investing? Are they comfortable doing it themselves? Are they disciplined enough in doing it themselves, or would they find value in working with someone like ourselves to have an element of accountability, to ensure that that journey and the amount that they are saving each month is a sustainable amount but also is going to allow them to reach their end goal, not just for themselves but, you know, for their families as well, because there is a lot of circumstances where there's only one individual in that family that will typically work, especially if they've got younger children. So again, that's a big consideration as as well. So having the conversation is important initially and then see if we can add value or map anything out for them.

Speaker 3:

I think something else as well that's worth talking about is how you can pay into your UK state pension voluntarily as an expatriate, something that you know 90% of the people that I speak to don't have no idea about. You know you leave the UK, you get excited, you come over, you start working and you know it's these little things that you can put in place once you're overseas that actually make a huge difference over the long term. I can't remember the exact figure, but you can pay something called Class 2 voluntary national insurance contributions and it's something like just over £3 a week and that will fill your missing years as you move forward, which is amazing. It's probably one of the best investments you can make actually, because it's not even the cost of a pint, definitely not out here.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's about, like tom said, there's about 180 pounds for each year that you're missing contributions. And currently, right now, which is also worth mentioning uh, there is a deadline which is april this year, 2025, in order to back the state pension contributions. If you've got any missing gaps between 2006 and 2018, after April, you'll only be able to back the the last six tax years. So, again, it depends on how long somebody has been here. So that's a worthwhile consideration. And the way that the state pension works is you need 35 years of contributions to get a full state pension. That used to be 30,. However, it changed recently. So 35 years of full state pension right now will give you around £11,600, which is available from age 67. And if you look at that as a joint couple, it's the best part of £23,000, which is a reasonable amount. But then it's understanding. What else have you got in place and do you really want to be reliant on the uk government in in retirement?

Speaker 2:

Um, you know for most people that they want to have an element of control, especially if they plan to retire before 67, because then you need to build in what is going to be the gaps here between 62 and 67 to ensure that you can have that same quality of life Again whilst you're fit, active, able.

Speaker 2:

Depending on the individual, life can start to slow down post 70, 75, 80. So that's also a big consideration and that comes down to the lifestyle financial planning which we've built in recently within hoxton, using the wealth flow and really understanding what people want out of life. You know, once they do stop working or if they transition to retirement, a lot of individuals out here, especially in um, you know engineering, construction, oil and gas. Those types of roles might go into consultancy work. So they might go from five days a week to four days to three days to two days. So it's understanding. You know what does an ideal retirement look like for that individual? How do they transition themselves from full-time employment into part-time employment, into stock working completely and building plans around that as well?

Speaker 1:

fantastic, and I want to end on the fact that if I'm in the uk, I've got a pension and I'm now going to move to, uh, the gcc. Okay, I can't really continue being looked after by my financial planner in the uk. How does it work here with hoxton as an international company, in the way that we're regulated in multiple jurisdictions, and why is that a benefit to the way that we're regulated in multiple jurisdictions?

Speaker 3:

And why is that?

Speaker 1:

a benefit to the clients that then would use our service if they become international living.

Speaker 3:

I think you know, as Ravi kind of alluded to earlier, the world seems to be getting smaller in the sense that people are more comfortable moving from one jurisdiction to another. When we first set up the business, you know it was UAE and it was UK. Now we have offices all across the the US, fully regulated by the SEC. You know um all across Europe, the Middle East Asia, australia, and you know basically what that means is, if you're moving out of the UK, you could come to Hoxton Wealth, um, and basically just say, look, this is where I am, this is where I think I might be, and basically it means we can look after you in a regulated jurisdiction wherever you end up, which is something I think is really important to people, you know, making sure that they can have that continuity of advice, even if they decide to move on as they go through their career and through their retirement as well.

Speaker 1:

Fantastic, so we're looking at the. Uk, we're looking at USA, Australia we work with clients all across the world, Australia we work with clients all across the world. And if a UK individual, say, for example, leaves the UK, goes to America, goes to Australia, comes into the GCC, they don't have to go searching around for a different financial advisor in every single country, because we've got them covered and we've got all the expertise.

Speaker 3:

We've got the tax advisory services, the mortgage services across all of these jurisdictions. So it means we can help them with everything their holistic plan as opposed to just their pensions, it can be the full package really.

Speaker 1:

Fantastic Chaps. Thanks so much for educating me today about the pensions and why we need to be literally checking upon them a lot more. And people can do that. They can reach out to both of you guys and they can contact you and do some pension reviews and hopefully they work out what their number is, when are they going to retire and how much do they need that's it yeah great stuff thanks guys cheers.