FTA: It sounds like having those overseas regulated offices is key?
PB: It is. We couldn't do a lot of the work that we do successfully without having those local offices. That was something that I spotted many years ago, irrespective of Brexit, that there were a lot of unregulated advisers working in the expat market.
We didn't want to be one of those, we wanted to be properly regulated in the places we operate.
FTA: What is the first policy you would change if you were in charge?
PB: The policy that the American revenue service has about not allowing income in pension transfers is probably the one policy that I would change. I think it's very short sighted on their behalf.
In Europe, again, free flow of pensions should be allowed because there's hundreds of thousands of people that move around the world these days.
And globalisation has meant there's much more mobility in the workforce, and to be able to take one's pension fund with you to another country and add to it in that country and then move it again if you move to another country and add to it from there in a tax efficient way is I think something that wouldn't be that difficult to achieve if there was a will to do it.
But it's hardly high on the agenda of most countries, to be honest.
carmen.reichman@ft.com
