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The World Bank’s latest findings indicate that countries are innovating like never before to make it easier to do business globally in today’s connected world. Read more “UK Ranks Ninth Overall in World Bank’s Latest Ease Of Doing Business Report; Usual Suspects Grab Top Rankings”
Take a deep breath. For once, Brexit woes have taken a back seat and the currency markets have had a little breathing space. With no fresh crises or emergencies, it has been relatively plain sailing this week for Sterling. Perhaps a good time then, to think about making that pounds to euros transfer you had been putting off? Read more “3 Great Deals For Sending Money Overseas: Pounds to Euros”
To use a straightforward example, isn’t it strange that, in a tech-mad world, we still need to employ advanced mental arithmetic skills to work out how much money we have in our bank accounts. Read more “Flavors of Fast? 40 Countries Now Using Faster Payment Schemes As Business Case Becomes Unarguable”
We are big fans of the “Lion” City State Singapore here at The Money Cloud. Ever since spending a fortnight there in the summer of 2017, we’ve been blogging about its history, business environment, culture, and smorgasbord of activities and entertainments the city teems with.
It’s also a haven for the world’s rich and wealthy; the “made-it” or “making-it” class who find Singapore’s always-on, hard working and uber-disciplined business culture very much to their tastes (as well as the super stylish malls, country clubs and man made Sentosa beach – the most Southerly tip of Asia). It is rumoured that roughly one in every three Singaporean citizens is a millionaire.
In all respects, Singapore is a state that punches above its weight, so perhaps it’s hardly surprising that The Lion State has retained its spot at the top of HSBC’s rankings, in the 2018 version of its 2018 Expat Explorer survey.
Reflecting the cosmopolitan nature of the survey, New Zealand places 2nd this year, and Germany third. Three contrasting countries, each with different strengths and weaknesses; it just goes to show that expats relocate for all kinds of reasons; work, family, romance, adventure, escape; and what suits one type of expat explorer may not suit another.
Canada and Bahrain take spots 4 and 5 on the list. Both are traditionally popular destinations for expats, and again for contrasting reasons. Bahrain ranked number 1 in Internations’ comprehensive analysis of all things expat related, thanks to its friendly environment, high quality infrastructure and job security, whilst Canada offers first-world living in beautiful surroundings, plus an eclectic culture and stable political environment.
Completing HSBC’s Top 10 are Australia, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, and the United Arab Emirates.
Before we take a deep dive into selected countries next week, let’s examine what makes Singapore the outstanding expat destination in HSBC’s eyes.
The split of male to female amongst Singapore expats is 60/40, and the vast majority (56%) are aged between 36-54. On average, expats earn in the region of $221,500 SGD, which works out at approximately $160,000 USD – one of the healthiest wage packages on offer for expats anywhere in the world.
Although Singapore boasts outstanding cultural, social and family life, inevitably, when it comes to the reasons why expats make the move there, career progression comes first. Singapore rewards hard work and dedication and its entire culture is designed to give individuals the greatest chance of personal success.
Living and working in Singapore is in every sense a challenge, that expats must embrace. Finance, consulting, trade, and hi-tech are the dominant industries, but Singapore is also embracing start-up culture, and most notably fintech, with the Monetary Authority Singapore (MAS) having built bridges with countries and cities all over the world, from London, to Sydney, to the Caribbean.
This content is sourced and brought to you by The Money Cloud – comparing the best rates for sending money overseas offered by hand-picked, regulated brokers and money transfer agencies.
Emmanuel Macron is an ex investment banker which may explain why the French President is pursuing an aggressive strategy to try to relocate fintech startups and financial services companies to Paris in the aftermath of Brexit. Can he succeed? Read more “Revolut Rejects Macron Overtures But Can London Stay Ahead Of Paris For Fintech?”
Amongst the many disruptive fintech startups that have mounted a sustained attack on banks and money transfer operators’ share of the international money transfer market, TransferWise may be the best known, and certainly the noisiest, trumpeting their bank beating rates via PR campaigns and flash mobs, everywhere from the City of London, to the streets of Singapore and now, as far afield as Sydney.
Today the company announced another historic moment in their short history, recording their first ever annual pre-tax profit. Read more “TransferWise Records First Ever Annual Profit, Pledges To Maintain Bank-beating Prices”
Augmentum, a specialist VC firm that focuses on promising fintech opportunities, made 2 investments last week into early stage, London based companies focused on the SME payments market, as well as a third investment into Duedil, which compiles information on unlisted early stage companies. Read more “3 London Based Fintech Firms Pick Up Funding In Rounds Led by Augmentum Providing Boost For Disruptive SMEs & Startups”
This month, Google announced some sweeping changes to its payment services, which had become a little confused, and confusing. Read more “Google Is Cleaning Up It’s Payments Act, Merging Apps & Offering Enhanced Services; Could International Money Transfer Be Next?”
Yesterday, we described the circumstances relating to the release of the UK governments much anticipated White Paper, which outlines how the UK intends to go about leaving the EU on 29th March 2019, and briefly described some of the ways that Brexit is expected to disrupt international trade between the UK and EU. Today let’s look at financial services in more detail. Read more “Brexit White Paper Deep Dive – What Are The Implications For UK and EU based Financial Services?”
Now that it is all but official that the UK will leave the EU on the 20th March 2019, there will doubtless be a flurry of activity by firms, particularly within the financial sector, to try to establish what the various scenarios and implications of Brexit will mean for them. Read more “Will The UK Remain In Single European Payments Area Post Brexit? EPC Issues New Guidance”
Amidst all the recent discussion and hand-wringing around the new GDPR regulations, it’s easy to forget that it was only in January this year that the updated Payment Services Directives, a set of EC-wide regulations designed to make it easier, faster and less expensive to for customers to pay for goods and services, by promoting innovation, came into force.
If the introduction of PSD2 has gone a little under the radar, a new report from PWC, in association with the Open Data Institute, argues that the effects of the Open Banking “revolution” certainly won’t. The report estimates that “Open Banking has the potential to create a revenue opportunity of at least £7.2bn by 2022 across retail and SME markets.” Read more “PWC / Open Data Institute Investigate State Of “Open Banking” Revolution In New Report”
Filipino workers in Hong Kong, of which there are more than 180,000, received a potential boost to their finances this week as Jack Ma, the billionaire co-founder of Alibaba, which counts fintech firms Ant Financial and Alipay as subsidiaries, made good on a promise he had made years ago to help his Filipino friends spend less on fees when sending money back home to friends and relatives. Read more “Ant Financial Introduces Low Cost Blockchain Money Transfers for Lucrative Hong Kong Philippines Remittance Channel”
2 London startups who both enjoy stellar reputations as customer focused, tech savvy disruptors of their big bank rivals are joining forces to launch an international money transfer service. Read more “2 Of London’s Trendiest FinTech Startups Join Forces For International Money Transfers”
In a recent article in Finextra, Lakshmi Narayanan at Travelex discusses the contrasting approaches taken by the Pakistan and India governments to the problems inherent in their countries remittance industries.
India is the largest market for inbound remittance in the world, receiving more than $72bn of inbound money transfers from overseas, whilst Pakistan also has a large inbound remittance market worth around £19.3bn. Read more “Cheaper, Faster Overseas Money Transfer Options Are Inspiring Customers To Embrace Digital MTOs”
It’s been an eventful week in the world of international money transfer. Whilst Trump launches trade wars with Europe, China, Canada, and Mexico (to name a few), which is guaranteed to lead to tricky exchange rate calculations for many businesses (don’t forget to check the latest rates and save up to 80% on fees using The Money Cloud), there has plenty of activity in the consumer international payments market too.
Here’s how the big stories have broken down in the past week or so. Read more “The Week In International Payments; Partnerships Galore, & Currencies Direct Tests Blockchain Solution”
Modern technology, and mobile tech especially, is making a multitude of lifestyle services easier to deal with; provided you are up to speed with the latest tap, swipe, scan and track technology, many things, including sending money overseas, can be done faster, easier, and cheaper using apps. Read more “The Best Money Transfer Apps of 2018 So Far…?”
London, May 15th
Medifinance, the Intelligent Financial Lender for Healthcare Professionals, and The Money Cloud, an award-winning provider of international money transfer price comparison, are delighted to have agreed a partnership to supply medical professionals with a real-time, sophisticated and reliable overseas money transfer solution. Read more “Medifinance Partners With The Money Cloud To Help Medical Professionals Discover The Best Deals On Overseas Money Transfers”
There is nothing unremarkable about a shipment of soybeans from Argentina to Malaysia; nor is it surprising when a transaction of this nature is financed using a letter of credit, issued by one bank, on behalf of the buyer, to another. Read more “World’s First Blockchain Based Trade Finance Transaction Completed By HSBC Using R3’s Corda”
Mitsubishi Corp and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group are the latest major financial institutions to announce they will be launching an international money transfer system built on the blockchain. Specifically, the firms will be using the distributed ledger technology developed by California based Ripple, which has also been trialled by the likes of Western Union, MoneyGram, the Saudi Central Bank, and China’s Lian Lian bank. Read more “Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp & Financial Group To Build International Money Transfer Network Using Ripple’s Distributed Ledger Tech”
The big news in London fintech circles this week is a reported $250 million fundraising round which has gone to Revolut, the digital banking app that offers a range of money-related products, but is probably best known for its payments technology, and international money transfer service. Read more “Digital Banking App Revolut – London’s Latest Fintech Unicorn Disrupting International Money Transfer, Reviewed”