Access Financial, your global employment solutions partner

Thanks to several years penning technical articles for ContractorUK on working abroad as a Brit, overseas taxation, foreign social security rules, and even countries’ weird and wonderful immigration and economic policies post-Brexit, I’m hopefully a familiar name, writes Access Financial founder-director Kevin Austin.

But are you 'au fait' with how my business, Access Financial, supports you if you work abroad as a contractor?

And your recruiters; should they wish to place contractors like yourself overseas, have they got the memo on how our services handle it all? For the both of you?

Capability with global employment solutions should be broad and deep

We know contractors and agents are busy people. So for the avoidance of doubt about that memo, I want to share with ContractorUK readers just some of Access Financial's broad and deep capabilities.

Specifically, I want to pinpoint how we’re assisting contractors with company growth -- their profits and not just physical expansion into new territories, while ensuring for them and their agencies that the not-insignificant risks and common pitfalls of contracting overseas are avoided.

Why contractors working overseas need the support of a reliable umbrella company

At a time when you want to focus on a new role, in a country you might not know much about, with a new work culture to boot, the umbrella company saves you time and effort.

Dealing with taxes and contributions in your foreign work country of choice is taken care of.

An umbrella offers you peace of mind. We can monitor the contract with your client, which benefits both parties -- as the client has a locally established entity to reduce the potential risks and adjustments of working with a new ‘ex-pat’ contractor. That’s you!

Why else use a trusted umbrella as a global solutions partner?

Once in-country (and we place to over 60 countries worldwide), you’ll be entitled to all local benefits and entitlements as a company employee.

Helpfully, the company can also sponsor work permits or visas for non-EU contractors who wish to work in the EU.

In the UK, some contractors ask why working with an umbrella company is even necessary. But when contracting overseas, working through an umbrella company has clear and present advantages.

Benefits of working with our umbrella company – top eight

I want to share eight benefits of working with our umbrella company -- some of them already reported to us by contractors we’ve placed overseas in only this second month of 2025.

Let’s get to the eight. Our umbrella is:

1. Responsible for all client payments, tax withholding, and social contributions.
2. Set up to send you a payslip each month to a local or foreign bank account.
3. Fast at processing earnings, because we know that adequate money flow matters.
4. Ready to assist in contract formation with the end-client (or ‘contract establishment’).
5. Across and actively leveraging all available tax breaks available to contractors.
6. On-hand to assist with any disputes with your client by resolving via mediation.
7. Automation-savvy, minimising contractor administration and irksome paperwork.
8. Knowledgeable (including on the practical stuff) on totalisation and double taxation treaties.

Recruiters rely on the likes of us - a reliable umbrella company - for overseas jobs. Why?

Let’s turn to the advantages that recruitment agencies can reap by partnering with a reliable, responsive, and compliant umbrella company.

Such a reputable umbrella becomes the sole employer for all of the agency’s contractors.

It’s invariably the most appealing benefit for the agency. Why? Well, this relationship shifts all payment responsibility to the umbrella company, freeing up agency resources.

As a recruiter, collaboration with the brolly also increases the attractiveness of your staffing business to potential contractors.

What is continuous employment status?

One way to accomplish this is through ‘continuous employment status’ -- a legal status that broadens a contractor’s options for statutory benefits such as sick pay, holiday pay, maternity pay, paternity pay, and more.

With continuous employment status, contractors can also demonstrate ongoing employment status, potentially making qualifying for loans and mortgages easier.

Continuous employment status (and its benefits) provides a sort of financial safety net that independent contractors have told us that they find more challenging to obtain.

In addition, umbrella companies that operate in specific industries may also offer appealing advantages to contractors working in particular or niche sectors.

But that’s not all.

Use tax code efficiently

Working with an umbrella company (that knows their onions!) as a recruitment agency allows the contractors to use their tax codes more efficiently. Instead of one pay cheque for each contracting company they work with, they receive one consolidated pay cheque each period and one at the end of the year.

There is also the reduced administrative burden that partnering with an umbrella company represents from the perspective of the already invariably paperwork-swamped recruitment agency. There’s even scope to potentially work without the big, in-house team, lowering operating costs and allocating internal resources more effectively toward achieving your larger business goals as a staffing business.

Compliant employee; what does it look like as 2025-26 looms?

There are three ways to structure an employee to achieve compliance:

• Self-employment

• Employment/EOR

• Limited Company

Be aware, not every worker/contractor is going to be eligible for all three solutions!

We are adept at walking contractor recruitment agencies through each, but frustratingly for those looking for a quick solution there is no one-size-fits-all answer as to the ‘best compliant employee structure.’

Each of the three ‘compliant employee’ models has its own benefits and drawbacks.

The only way to properly determine the best model for a compliant employee on an overseas contract is to:

• Understand your requirements;
• Grasp the wishes of your clients (and finally, often what I like to prioritise --);
• Establish what is in the contractor’s best interests.

To demonstrate this, and with compliance in global employment solutions being key, don’t settle anything for less than an in-depth fact-find.

And right now we firmly believe Access Financial is unique in using this multi-layered methodology; it makes us not just the overseas working industry’s leading umbrella company for Britons, but a militant problem-solver too.

Here are six facts we’d like to share that back up these claims. They go some way to explaining why January 2025 for our business dedicated to overseas contractor placements saw the highest sales in 15 months!

So a new record and one that defies any sense of slowdown.

Why we're the 'go-to' for global employment solutions, six reasons, ranked

1. We’ve had profitable operations for TWENTY-ONE YEARS, so that’s providing a full range of legal, compliant solutions in more than 60 contractor-friendly countries for more than two decades.
2. Nearly ONE HUNDRED employees dedicated to serving clients – potentially you too!
3. Offices in NINE countries; Switzerland (head office), Germany, the UK, China, India, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, Luxembourg, and Cyprus.
4. THIRTY subsidiary companies to sponsor work visas, plus an in-house immigration department.
5. An R&D department (also internal) staffed by qualified accountants with FCCA FCA FIAI CPA, ADIT, and MBA degrees.
6. We’re a holder of BOTH federal and cantonal labour-leasing licences in Switzerland – an extremely contractor-friendly destination for 2025!

Finally, keep it under your contracting hat, but we’ve got even more in our locker to boost your recruitment agency or overseas contracting career this year. It ranges from our shiny new self-software development unit -- to a certain someone being kept at the very cutting-edge of overseas work, non-UK contracting, and temporary agency jobs abroad, due to having to write a steady stream of ContractorUK articles!  

For further details on how Access Financial can support your international worker mobility plans for 2025, click here for a full range of services: https://accessfinancial.com/?utm_source=ContractorUK