Transferring money for international investments

So you're planning to make an investment in the near future? Or intending to remit proceeds of international investments back home? We can offer you a few useful tips designed to help you make the most of your money. What's more, when it comes to making your investment or cashing out the proceeds, you can use one of our listed overseas money transfer providers and take full advantage of their offer.

Funding share portfolios

For the uninitiated, a share portfolio is essentially a slightly lower-risk way to invest in the stock market. Rather than putting all your eggs in one basket, you can diversify – so if a company you've invested in hits a slump, you can rely on your other investments to effectively bail you out.

There was a time when individual investors wouldn't dare to create a portfolio of their own, instead turning to investment trust fund managers to do the hard work for them – for a fee, of course. But nowadays, an increasing number of people are prepared to take a rather more hands-on approach. Even better, there are many tracker products available allowing investors to buy into a fund that tracks a particular sector, country or financial index. These products typically have much lower management fees than more hands-on investment funds.

If you're planning to make an overseas portfolio of your own, remember to play the long game as stocks can go up as well as down. You may want to consider how much to diversify your portfolio both by industry and by country.

Investing in bonds

In essence, bonds are a type of fixed-income security founded on debt; basically, when you invest in bonds, you're lending money to a business or government in return for interest on your money, until eventually they repay the amount you're owed. One of the most attractive features of a bond is the fact that they are often seen as safer or lower risk than investing in equities. Additionally, many bonds provide payment of periodic cash flow – not typical of many other types of investments.

Of course, no investment opportunity is entirely without drawbacks; in the case of bonds, it's important to bear in mind that the low risk means there is lower reward – the rate of return is generally lower than with other securities.

Making foreign investments

There's a whole host of reasons why you may choose to make investments overseas rather than in your home country. Relevant factors may be: tax incentives for foreign investors; protection of assets; greater confidentiality thanks to the existence of secrecy legislation; and more opportunity to diversify your investments.

However, it should be noted that there are also a couple of potential pitfalls to making foreign investments. Although the vast majority of offshore investing is perfectly legal, tax agencies are increasingly keen to crack down on traditional ways of avoiding tax – and while loopholes still exist, they are becoming less common. It can also be quite expensive to set up an offshore account. 

There are also taxes that may exist on the proceeds of investments and money transferred by international investors – these depend on the country and sector and professional advice should be sought. If you're planning to make any types of investments, we suggest that you seek some professional advice to help align your investment goals with your investment strategy.

If you're ready to invest, get yourself signed up with a trusted money transfer provider.