Resources & Insights

Neil Robbirt on Cross-Border Retirement and Legacy Planning

By QROP Direct Editorial Team · Interview with Neil Robbirt, Chairman of Global Investments Group · Reviewed 2026-06-16

Neil Robbirt on Cross-Border Retirement and Legacy Planning

The following is an interview with Neil Robbirt, Chairman of Global Investments Group. His views are provided for general education and information only and are not personal financial, tax or legal advice. Cross-border retirement planning is highly dependent on your circumstances, your country of residence and the relevant treaties, and the rules can change. Always take regulated advice in the relevant jurisdictions before acting.

QROP Direct: What makes retirement planning fundamentally different for an expat?

The number of moving parts. A UK resident planning retirement deals with their pensions, their State Pension, their other savings and one tax system. An expat is doing all of that across at least two jurisdictions, with a double taxation agreement sitting in between, currency exposure running through everything, and residency rules that can change the answer entirely. The same pension, the same person, can produce a very different retirement depending on which country they're sitting in when they draw it.

So the discipline that matters most is coordination. The pieces — UK pensions, local pensions or social security, the State Pension, investments, property, and the estate plan — have to be looked at together. The most common failure our advisers encounter is each piece being optimised in isolation by different specialists, with no one responsible for how they fit together.

QROP Direct: Where do people most often go wrong on the income side?

Two places. The first is the sequencing of income — the order in which you draw from different pots. Drawing from the wrong source first, or taking tax-free cash at the wrong moment, can cost a great deal over a retirement, particularly when two tax systems and a treaty are involved. Sequencing is where good cross-border planning earns its fee.

The second is currency. If your pension is in sterling and your life is in euros, or dirhams, or baht, then exchange-rate movements are not background noise — they directly change your standard of living. Retirees who don't think about currency can find their real income swinging by double digits over a few years for reasons that have nothing to do with their investments. Building some resilience to that into the plan, rather than hoping the rate is kind, is part of doing it properly.

QROP Direct: How should expats think about the State Pension in the mix?

As a valuable, often underused foundation. Many expats have gaps in their National Insurance record from years spent abroad, and those gaps reduce the State Pension they'll eventually receive. In a lot of cases voluntary contributions to fill those gaps offer an unusually good return relative to the cost — but the rules on who can pay, and which class, are specific and time-limited, so it needs checking individually and not left too late.

The other piece is uprating. Whether your State Pension increases each year once you're abroad depends on the country you retire to — some are uprated and some are frozen at the rate when you first claim. That can make a substantial difference over a long retirement, and it's something to factor into the choice of where to settle, not to discover afterwards.

QROP Direct: Let's turn to legacy. The 2027 inheritance tax change looms large here.

It does, and it changes a planning assumption many people have built on. For years, unused pension funds generally sat outside the estate for inheritance tax, which made a pension an efficient way to pass wealth to the next generation — you'd spend other assets first and preserve the pension as a legacy. From 6 April 2027, legislation brings most unused pension funds within the scope of inheritance tax.

For an expat that's particularly intricate, because it interacts with domicile, with the succession rules of the country you live in, and with double taxation. Some countries have forced-heirship rules that override what your will says; some have their own inheritance or succession taxes that interact with the UK position. So the 2027 change is not just a UK question — it's a prompt to look at the whole cross-border estate picture. And because it's close, that review should be happening now.

QROP Direct: What does good legacy planning look like in that context?

Good legacy planning starts with clarity about domicile and residence, because those drive so much of the tax treatment. From there it is about making sure the structures are coherent across borders — that the will is valid and effective where the assets are, that beneficiary nominations on pensions and policies are up to date and consistent with the client's wishes, and that the plan accounts for the succession rules of the country of residence rather than assuming UK rules apply.

None of that is exotic, but it's frequently neglected, because it requires someone to look across the whole picture rather than at one country at a time. The cost of getting it wrong falls on the family, after the event, when nothing can be fixed. That is why Global Investments Group's consistent position is that a relatively modest investment in coordinated cross-border advice is far better than leaving a family to untangle an unplanned cross-border estate afterwards.

QROP Direct: If there's one habit you'd want every expat to adopt, what is it?

The consistent message from Global Investments Group's team is to start earlier than most people think necessary, and to build a complete picture by around age 55. Most people begin the serious retirement conversation far too late — within two or three years of stopping work — and by then the room to optimise is largely gone. With a full model in place years ahead, there is time to make contribution decisions, plan the sequencing of income, consider whether any transfer makes sense, and shape the estate position while choices still exist. Time is the one input in this that cannot be bought back, and the expats who plan early are consistently the ones who retire with the fewest regrets.

Summary: Coordinating a Cross-Border Retirement

1. Coordinate, don't optimise in isolation — pensions, State Pension, investments, property and estate plan belong in one view
2. Mind the income sequencing — the order you draw pots in matters across two tax systems
3. Treat currency as a real risk, not background noise, when income and spending are in different currencies
4. Check your National Insurance record and State Pension uprating for your destination country, early
5. Revisit legacy planning before April 2027, when most unused pensions enter the scope of inheritance tax
6. Make wills and beneficiary nominations coherent across borders, accounting for local succession rules
7. Build the full picture by age 55 — time is the input you can't buy back