The currency blog

Craig Stephenson

UK Business Development Manager 

What is your role at Currencies Direct?

 Having worked in our Spanish operation for over 3 years, I have now joined the UK Affiliates & Partnerships department in our London Head Office. My main aim is to help existing affiliates achieve additional revenue by maximising their online and word of mouth referral procedures. In addition to this, I am always on the lookout for new affiliates to come on board with Currencies Direct and I’d love to hear from existing affiliates who know of businesses who are not currently using our wide range of services. 

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Zoe Duncombe: Head of Global Strategic Partners

With 10 years of sales and marketing experience within the foreign exchange and payment arena, I have followed the private client, commercial client and the strategic partner model with great interest. There have been some obvious developments and changes, especially within the traditional affiliate model in the UK. Private clients clearly source overseas listings direct with the overseas estate agent rather than the traditional model of their real estate partner within the UK.

Why do you think so many Brits live abroad?
10% of Britons live overseas at the moment, but as the pensioner market grows this will increase year after year. The world is getting smaller and more and more people have realised they can live in the sun, commute to and from a country nearby and don’t have to be in the UK everyday to operate a successful business. For the retired Brits abroad, it’s obvious…the sun and the quality of life!

Which country do you think may be the next big investment area?
I’m not sure there will be another Dubai or another Bulgaria (which have been hot spots in the past), but the more traditional countries sales will start to increase again. All we know is over 2,000 Brits leave this country every week, so they must be buying somewhere! Maybe South Africa is the next hot spot place to move and retire to after the successful World Cup? At the moment it’s no.8 in the league table for emigration. The top being Australia!

What makes CD special?
Currencies Direct prides itself on its local knowledge. We are based in the heart of the financial City of London, but we have representation in our most popular countries so we are there on the ground in order to offer our partners and their clients the best possible service they can get!

Zoe Duncombe
Head of Global Strategic Partners

If you’re one of the 1.2 million British pensioners planning to enjoy your retirement abroad, it’s really important to protect your inheritance by understanding the tax implications for your inheritance which are not only affected by UK law but also by taxation law in the country you are now resident in. Forewarned is forearmed!

Every country has its own rules affecting inheritance tax(IHT) and the result of an altered domicile status without clearly planned tax mitigation strategy could be financially disastrous. Spain and France remain top choices for retirement but IHT rules in these countries are well known to be punitive for expat Britons. For example if a couple retire to Spain to live in a jointly owned property there will almost certainly be a very costly ISD charge (Spain’s version of IHT) upon the survivor when the first dies. Not only do you need to be aware of taxation laws abroad but also be aware that you may still be liable for IHT in the UK.

Putting a strategy in place will help to mitigate against potential double paymentof IHT. There are expert tax consultants available who are well versed in the needs of expat Britons living abroad who can help ensure that assets already created or created in future are not overtaxed. Using a specialist foreign exchange company such as Currencies Direct helps clients to save money on their transfer but we recommend that they also use the services of an expert tax consultant to protect the assets they have purchased.

Building a search engine friendly website or webpage is not rocket science. Here are our top tips to help maximise your chances of getting your website listed higher in search engine results.

• Make quality content a priority.
• Structure content using h1, h2, h3,<strong>, <p> tags.
• Title, keywords, descriptions relevant to each page.
• Use and link keywords and phrases within page content.
• Keep away from highly competitive keywords and phrases.
• Put content, structure and usability over design.
• Site coding - build for both humans and machines.
• Exchange links or content with complimentary websites.
• Keep your website content regularly updated.
• Search engines can also read PDFs, PPT, Doc, Excel etc.
• Use Flash wisely - don’t build your website entirely with Flash.
• Understand and respond to visitors needs - view visitors log.
• Don’t spam the search engines.

There is a wealth of information on the web dedicated to search engine optimisation and how you can do it. Below is a small selection of the ones we found most helpful

Visit these websites to find out more about search engines:

1. DMOZ Search List
2. Wikipedia: Search Engine
3. Evolution of Web Searching
4. Google-Friends
5. Yahoo! Search Blog
6. Website content analyser
7. History of Search Engines
8. How internet search engines work
9. Search engine optimisation

Distributed by Michael G @ http://www.creotec.com

The effects of QE (quantitative easing) have not been fully realised yet.  It was thought that decisive action by the US and British governments would prompt a rally in the fortunes of QE currencies, however the reverse is true.  The pound has slumped against all the currencies refraining from QE, with lows of 1.0607 against the euro.  A currency’s value is no longer dictated by alterations in monetary policy or tweaking the interest rate, it is determined by the markets belief in the short term bailout policies of the respective government.  The fact that QE involves the governments buying of fixed income assets such as corporate bonds has encouraged a thread of optimism in the equity markets, which enjoyed a modest rally toward the end of last week, but sadly the outlook is predominantly bearish.  The main focus of QE is to provide liquidity to those markets dependant on institutional lending.  The process ultimately starts at the top and then filters down to a grass roots level.  This will take time, hence QE is yet to help local economies.

There are definitely more sellers coming into the market.  Although not ‘universally true’, prices the other side of the channel are coming down.  There is so much stock (property) available now that it is starting to become a buyers market.  Would be expats are now in an enviable position as they can to a certain extent, dictate the rate at which prices deflate.