International banking – a case study of how employers can support mobile employees

Emma Rush, a member of the International Service team at Lloyds TSB:
"Lloyds TSB is really flexible in how it works with third parties. We have a formal service called the International Intermediary Service. This service provides dedicated support to companies and professionals around the world who have contact with clients or employees who would benefit from the advantages of our international banking services.'

Lloyds TSB's International Intermediary Service offers:

• Support, help and advice from a local representative office and the dedicated intermediary team
• Commitment from us to support their client/employee relationship
• Easy access to our product range
• Potential for recognition and remuneration from any introductions made
• Marketing support
• Advance copies of our quarterly customer magazine, Shoreline
• IntermediaryLine – an e-newsletter to keep clients up-to-date with news and service information.

"Depending on how we could help, we are also happy to look at one-off activities. This could take the form of mailing some of the employee database to something as simple as having a presence in their building one day. If there is an opportunity to work together, we’d look to accommodate any request."

For more information, please contact Emma Rush or Cliff Govender at Lloyds TSB International on 0800 876 6555/020 7451 6212, quoting RM003

Cliff Govender, of Lloyds TSB, considers how, in an increasingly global world, HR professionals can help ensure that international assignees are financially prepared for their move.

A new survey of more than 1,500 working Britons¹ reveals us as a nation of fearless travellers with a desire to experience working life overseas. The survey found that 32 per cent of respondents had been employed outside the UK at some point in their careers, spending an average of just over a year overseas. Almost 49 per cent of nonretired respondents said they would like to work abroad in the future. More than half of the respondents thought that meeting new people would be an advantage of working in a foreign country, and 45 per cent considered the opportunity to learn a new language and escape from the UK’s weather to be the chief benefits of working abroad.

Setting up a bank account if you’re a non-British national needn’t be as complicated as it can seem, as Susan Bevan explains.

Opening a local bank account is a much-cited headache for staff relocating to the UK – or, indeed, to almost anywhere else. Internet expat sites feature woeful tales of long delays, bureaucratic hassles and, above all, the vicious cycle of bankers wanting to see documents like rental agreements that can’t be acquired without a bank account to start with.

The natural inclination, particularly in these credit-crunch days, is to blame the bankers, but it is not altogether their fault. Many of the problems involve the documents needed to establish customers’ identity, where banks have to be much more careful these days to fight increasingly sophisticated financial crime, such as money laundering and transfer of funds to terrorists.

Banks in the UK, as in most other countries, are required by law to check new customers’ identities, but there are no precise rules for this. Thus, there can be considerable variation between banks in the ID documentation they require – and the annoying discovery that account-opening advice from friends or colleagues may not apply at the bank with a handy local branch.

Susan Bevan looks at the implications of changes to tax laws for foreigners living in the UK on a non-permanent basis.

The experts who advise on expatriate workers’ tax affairs were delighted in mid February when Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) gave way, at least temporarily, on their biggest outstanding complaint about the new tax rules for ‘non-doms’, in force since April 2008.

Non-domiciles – foreigners living and/or working in the UK but who have not taken steps to designate the country their permanent home – include almost all expatriates in Britain, though news coverage of the tax changes introduced in last year’s budget largely focused on the international super-rich who choose to have a home in this country.

It was the ability of such people to avoid almost any UK tax on their vast wealth that largely provoked the tax changes, but these also affect quite ordinary expatriate employees. In last summer’s issue of Re:locate, we looked at the major implications for them and their employers.