The global mobility industry is undergoing a revolution, driven forward by technology and aided by the efficiencies of Artificial Intelligence (AI). In an ever more complex global system of visa applications, entry requirements and tax and legal compliance, companies need a more streamlined way to move employees in a fast and cost-effective way. AI can help organisations move talent and manage the accompanying administration of visa applications, tax compliance and legal requirements.AltoVita’s Smart, Safe and Sustainable Summit, which took place in London and brought together business executives, HR leaders, and mobility experts, explored the future of work and how AI and technology are changing the way we move people around the world. This was a key theme in the panel discussion hosted by AltoVita, featuring leaders across the global mobility industry.The conference featured a panel discussion: Room for Improvement: The Headaches of Policy Compliance, which looked at the burden of administrative tasks and compliance that many global mobility departments and professionals are facing. The panel discussion was moderated by Beverly King, Director of Client Partnerships, AltoVita, with expertise provided by Ben Oghene, Chief executive officer at The Cozm; Soren Sturup-Toft, Immigration & Global Mobility Lead, EMEA & APJ at Databricks; and Sigrid Nauwelaerts, Head of Reward, Europe, RSA Insurance.

The billion dollar visa problem

Beverly King, VP of Client Partnerships at AltoVita, began the session with a striking figure: in 2024 alone, global E-visa spend surpassed $1 billion. That number is expected to double by 2030. When visa agency services are added, the global spend jumps to an estimated $3 to $4 billion this year, and it is rising at a similar pace.This rising volume of international movement for assignments, projects and business travel, is accelerating, putting greater pressure on mobility teams to deliver. As politicians constantly change the rules over visa and entry requirements, global mobility professionals are having to process complex applications, while managing the expectations of assignees and the wider business, and doing so while operating within budget constraints.“The session today is really about understanding some of the policy compliance headaches that we all face day in day out, and how that interacts across all of our different services,” Beverly King said.

Examining the real cost of compliance

Beverly King began the discussion by asking the panel which aspects of compliance caused the most frustration for travellers and why.“The biggest problem is timing,” said Soren Sturup-Toft, Lead immigration and mobility for APAC and EMEA at Databricks, which is an AI and data storage company. “It is applications being delayed. It is maybe not having technology for your application flows. These may be manual, they may be paper based, and depending on which jurisdiction you are going into, there may be a lack of knowledge, if your vendors are not linked up as well. So I think timing and headaches with actually getting everything in the right place is a big one.”Sigrid Nauwelaerts of RSA, who was previously EMEA head of mobility for ten years with Johnson & Johnson as the EMEA head of mobility, and then Head of Global Mobility at Kenvue, and is based in Antwerp, Belgium, said there were new challenges in the current global volatility and that delays in mobile intersected with problems of moving the family and finding the right educational setting.“I think there is another element today in our geopolitical environment, which is uncertainty,” she explains. “People might previously have found it pretty easy to go to specific countries with specific nationalities, but it can become a bit more challenging today. So immigration for sure, is a challenge, and that also translates to the family. If my immigration is delayed, will my kids be able to go or to start a school fast enough? So I don't know if I really want to go now.”She said the speed of processing immigration applications was also a challenge, and there was a need for global mobility teams to be consulted as early as possible in the process.“In mobility, we have always asked our business partners to involve us as soon as possible. And that's a bit of an ongoing battle, but it's so important right now in order to deal with the compliance needs.”Beverly King added that if there was a knock on effect on the immigration side, it had a knock on effect on all of the other services, whether that is for mobility or business travel.Ensuring that the ecosystem of relocation is robust is so important to the whole process of the assignment.“If something happens within the immigration side or the compliance side, it then has an impact on everything else in the chain, and the whole chain comes down,” Beverly King said. “Talking about the anxiety (around delay) for the employees and the effect on their wellbeing is such a critical thing,” she said.

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Read related articles

• How AI integration and smart agents are redefining Global Mobility
• Interview with Benjamin Oghene, The Cozm
• The shape of mobility to come: strategy, technology, and leadership in a disrupted world
• The evolving role of global mobility: from back office to strategic business partner

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How automation is saving time and cutting costs

Benjamin Oghene, the CEO of the Cozm, a technology company that handles compliance for global mobility and business travel, talked through a real world example of where technology had been able to solve a major compliance and visa headache for a client. He cited the example of the EU Posted Workers Directive which required everyone attending the Paris Olympics to have a special visa.Cisco wanted to send a team of people to work at the Paris Olympics but they only had two weeks to go before the deadline, and their normal service provider advised them that the process would take a minimum of six weeks and cost £600 per applicant.“Obviously they couldn't do that because they had only two weeks to have the people on the ground,” he explained. “So we (The Cozm) leveraged a combination of different types of automations to file those applications, not in six weeks, but in 60 seconds or less for each application, and for around about 20 per cent of the fees it would have been if it was delivered through humans.“This gives you an idea of the impact of these types of technologies that are emerging in our industry and how the cost of these services are going to drop dramatically over time, and the speed is going to increase,” he said.The next project that Cisco had was in Croatia, where they were losing up to a million euros a day from not having people on the ground in Croatia because their Croatian clients told them they couldn't arrive without having all the paperwork.”Benjamin Oghene explained that they worked with other companies, including Adidas, and they partner with other service providers, which is also becoming an important part of The Cozm’s work.

How can business travel, compliance and global mobility work together?

Beverly King suggested that there were a lot of opportunities for business travel, compliance and global mobility to liaise and work together, and yet in many organisations these departments were kept in separate silos.Sigrid Nauwelaerts of RSA said in her company it was “very separate, but we are also size wise, much smaller than Johnson & Johnson,” she said. She said that in 2022 Johnson & Johnson’s mobility team started to carry out some risk assessment around business travel, highlighting the need for compliance, who was responsible for it and who would provide the budget for it.She said that no one really wants to take on all the responsibility for these different functions, especially if there are not going to be given extra staff to help with it.“If you have more resources, maybe that's a possibility, or with a different technology that is also a possibility. But I think personally, it makes sense to align those two from a compliance perspective, and then a cost perspective, and aslo aligning also your vendors. I think that definitely makes sense.”Soren Sturup-Toft said that the responsibility was also split at Databricks, where business travel is handled by travel and expenses, which he described as “suboptimal”.“We are currently in the process of actually looking at the compliance risk, doing analysis on the historical data that's been happening,” he explained. “We have had quite a few business travellers and we are hoping that we will be able to leverage a combination of AI and vendor ecosystems to be able to deliver this better.”Beverly King asked the panel who they felt that current tools and platforms are supporting their policy enforcement, whether that was on the immigration side, the tax side, or for temporary housing.“We definitely take advantage of the platforms that we do have,” said Soren Sturup-Toft,” but we still want to add more. We are looking at mobility platforms as well. We are looking at different vendors, maybe for relo, which could help augment this. There is no comparison in terms of being able to actually get the analytics and actually being sure that you are running compliance, and I think the only way to do that is through technology.”He said that that data is helping the team to make better decisions, to make forecast, and to be able to argue the business case to the wider organisation.“The more data we have, the better we can underpin our decisions,” he said.Ben Oghene of The Cozm explained that government authorities are also using data to build vast databases across different functions. This will be the ETIAS, a new travel authorisation for visa-exempt travellers to enter 30 European countries, for a fee, which is due to be operational by the last quarter of 2026.“The reason why it is taking longer to publish is because they are connecting immigration with tax, Employment Law and Social Security,” he said. “If you don't have a good handle on your travellers and your mobile employees, you may find that the authorities have more of a handle.“We typically think of government authorities are being slow in this area, but technology is moving in a way that is making it much easier to build technology. Both government agencies and service providers are going to be building technologies much faster based on data. The good news is that I think it also means that accessing technology to do things will be much easier and the cost will drop over time. Cost coming down is definitely a big focus for everyone.”

How AltoVita is building AI features to enhance product experience

Behind the scenes, AI is revolutionising the way that global mobility operates. In a conversation between Anton Reid, Senior director of engineering at AltoVita, and Seb Hammond, director of Global Operations at AltoVita, it was clear just how fast technological change was moving. It was about shifting away from mundane tasks and putting time and energy into activities that really provide impact.“The pace of delivery, the pace of innovation and technology, has rapidly changed,” Anton Reid said. “Things that used to take a few months might take a week now or days, so we are able to move much, much faster, and this doesn't just affect us as engineers.“What we are really seeing is a shift in the tools and platforms that we are using, and it reminds me a lot of the days of cloud and mobile,” he explained. “So I started my journey off in computer science, networking and security, and when I came out of university, everything was all data centres. In my first job, we had data centres around the UK, and if anything ever went wrong, even out of hours in the middle of night, we had to get up and sometimes drive up to deal with those technical problems. Now, with the migration to cloud, I can do everything from the comfort of my own home.”Seb Hammond said one of the big differences in AI that has revolutionised the way that we work and play is the 100 per cent mobile focus.“It is there, in your hand,” he said. “You are able to converse with it. It is humanised as well, so I find myself just chatting, and using it as an assistant.”Anton described how using AI could result in 20 to 30 per cent efficiency benefits, and that the way that AI is being used by global mobility teams and customer assistants has also changed.“Three years ago, open AI (Chat GPT) landed and we could go and ask questions to AI and get really simple and basic answers back,” he said. “Then we evolved to giving agents specific roles with a much more in detail prompt, and we got much more detailed and specific answers back. Next we evolved specialised agents that could do things continuously and autonomously, and now we have agentic workflows where AI agents can actually communicate and work together to get the job done with even less human input into that specific task.”This in turn has led to a change in the role of customer service representatives, who are having to do less of the very slow and tedious and mundane tasks, and who now can automate these tasks, freeing up time to focus on valuable human interactions. Despite the gloomy predictions of mass numbers of people losing their jobs, this could actually free up humans to do more interesting jobs and perform roles that cannot be done by machines.“There has been a huge discussion around how AI is going to come along take everyone's jobs,” Seb Hammond said. “There will be jobs that will go but then what does that mean for the human experience? I can see in our organisation, specifically, if we can take away some of those mundane tasks, then front line people can learn new things and improve upon the way that they work.”He said this would free people to upskill because they have extra bandwidth, and that would be the differentiating factor between humans and AI, leading to a better and more interesting career role._{Rewriting the Rules panel}

Rewriting the Rules: Disrupting temporary housing with data and AI to improve employee experience

One of the key pain points for assignees when they are moving abroad is finding accommodation that meets their family needs, is in the right area with suitable amenities and is within the organisation’s budget. In a panel moderated by Apurva Poddar, Senior Client Development Manager, AltoVita, key industry panellists debated how AI and deep data collection can make the process more efficient and provide information on sustainability criteria too.The panellists were Carla Campbell-Smith, Global Move Manager, Squarepoint Capital, Karen FitzGerald, VP Head of Global Mobility, NBCUniversal and Emma Balogun, Talent Mobility Business Partner, EMEA and APAC, Stripe.Starting the debate, Karen FitzGerald said that a lot of corporate housing has historically been quite sterile and  lacking personality.“At NBCUniversal we focus very heavily on the employee experience,” she explained, “and one of the things that we were troubled with, was that we didn't work with organisations that truly understood those properties. They had not vetted them, and in in some situations, especially post COVID, when a number of properties have been sitting vacant for a long time, we had a lot of challenges around quality and availability.“What we were finding, as well as we were paying a lot of money for properties that really were not up to the standard that we were expecting for our people, our employees had their own personal stance on what they required. That can have an impact on people's well being, people's enjoyment of their assignment, and their time in another country. It's really, really important to get it right.”Carla Campbell-Smith of Squarepoint Capital emphasised how important data was to her organisation, and being able to quantify spend and use predictive analytics was a key tool.“Data is very big for us, as we are a quantitative hedge fund,” she said. “Everything is data driven. So for us, particularly, giving information to our partners to show them how successful we are in the programme is key. Being able to be able to show exactly where we are spending money.”She cited the example of how her organisation was managing a high volume of people to Bangalore in India, and that move was now going to be happening on an annual basis.“So being able to use that data to go back to the business and say one month is not enough time to get 51 people settled in a three week period. Instead, let's try and think about how we get those people settled over a much longer period of time.”That way, the team would be better able to think about those individuals were going, and how satisfied they were.“Getting all of that data is key, particularly when you are early on in your programme, as data is going to be the thing that really helps you to get to the next level and helps your stakeholders buy in,” she said.

Ensuring the human touch works seamlessly with AI

Emma Balogun, Talent Mobility Business Partner, EMEA and APAC for Stripe, said global mobility was highly emotive, and that empathy and understanding were still very important ingredients in a successful mobility programme.“The simple answer is we need to have a blended approach,” she explained. “We take a  hybrid approach at Stripe and we are very user centric. It is also a very high performance driven environment, so we are all being encouraged to use AI and to automate processes and streamline where we can.”At Stripe, she said there is now a standing agenda item each quarter where teams are being welcomed to  give feedback on wins they have had in terms of automating processes, streamlining and sharing efficiency gains and ideas.“Automation and AI is great for the mundane tasks and repetitive tasks, for offering that 24/7 support, and for really simple questions, but we are always going to need the human touch as well,” she said.She highlighted how Global Mobility is hugely emotive, and companies are always going to have cases that are nuanced and need a more experienced person to make a final decision.“We are going to need strategic decision making, empathy, understanding, and that is where we still need the human touch,” she said. “We have probably all had examples where we have been using customer service, and you get as far as you can with the chat bot, and you just need to speak to a human. So I think that helping your AI understand at which point it needs to bring in a human is really important.”She described the system at Stripe were anybody wanting HR advice has to raise a ticket, and then they will fit the query in a set topic. However, quite often, once someone has logged that ticket, she will get a personal Slack message asking for a chat, because the issue is sensitive or personal, and the person would prefer to have a conversation with a human.“They say: I'd much rather talk it through with you in person. So whether it is temporary living solutions, or the wider relocation process, we are always going to have that need to be able to have that connectedness and that trust and empathy that only human beings at this time can provide,” she said.The global mobility pain points

• Timing: applications being delayed, not having the right technology, using spreadsheets instead of new technology
• Immigration delays: when visas and immigration paperwork holds up the assignment pipeline, it is not only the assignee who is inconvenienced. Their family and partner may also not be able to meet their pre-arranged timetable
• Anxiety and failed assignments: That hesitation ripples throughout organisations. A delay in immigration affects school enrolments, temporary housing, and tax planning. The anxiety it causes employees is real.

The theme of the Smart, sustainable summit was the advantages of AI, and how humans will still play a vital role in global mobility. As companies scale and compliance becomes more complex, and governments are building ever more sophisticated systems, technology will become essential for all organisations, whatever their size. Manual systems, Excel spreadsheets, and decisions made without deep data will not be able to keep pace.The message from the Summit is that technology is evolving, and that includes public-sector platforms as well as immigration platforms and compliance needs. While the upside is that costs are dropping, and access to digital compliance tools is improving, the downside is that business travel and global mobility departments are going to have to be very clear about what the rules and regulations are for the people they are moving.While data and technology are powerful enablers, culture remains a significant variable in global mobility success. Some companies are still in the early stages, but culture plays a big role in how change happens and whether different departments work together effectively. You can have data, but it takes leadership and willingness to actually use it.

Looking ahead: Compliance, data and technology aligned

The future of global mobility is increasingly defined by compliance—driven by data, delivered by platforms, and enabled by partnerships.From the expansion of E-visas from government, to the fusion of business travel and mobility, organisations are rethinking their approach, and having to invest in technology, and reaping the benefits of automation. Those that succeed will be the ones who combine AI expertise with the human touch. Smart organisations recognise that when moving key staff, the cost of delay is more than just paperwork. The world is moving faster, employee expectations are higher, and the right systems can support global talent, wherever their next assignment might be.

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