Cross-Border Financial Planning for Americans in Singapore

Arielle Tucker (00:01.024)

If you're an American living in Singapore, you already know earning in Singapore dollars while filing in USD is just the beginning. You have US tax rules on one side, the Singapore system on the other, and no clear playbook for investing and building wealth across currencies without getting tripped up. Anne-Marie Regal has been living that reality for years. She is a certified financial planner and the founder of Avira Wealth, which is based in both Singapore and New York City.

And she was one of the first financial planners to build a practice for globally mobile US connected families. Today she is sharing what she has learned, the mistakes she has seen, and the planning gaps most Americans here in Singapore miss. So, what sh what she would do differently if she was starting over. Anne Marie, you are such a legend in the cross-border community. I am so excited to have this conversation with you. Thank you for taking the time and joining us today.

Ann Marie (00:52.402)

Thank you, Ariel. Yeah, thank you.

Arielle Tucker (00:57.61)

So take me back, like set the stage for us. What initially brought you to Singapore as one of the early, you know, US CFPs doing cross-border work? How did you find your path there?

Ann Marie (01:02.951)

Yeah.

Ann Marie (01:10.552)

So I'd been working in private wealth management in New York and my husband was at a bank and the bank it was 2007 and the bank said, Hey, do you want to go to Singapore for two years? And my husband went, Yeah, I think so, but let me go home and ask my wife. So we went for what we thought was going to be a great two-year adventure. My daughter was four, she was going into kindergarten. We thought, Yep, two years, we'll see Asia and we'll flip back.

2008, the financial crisis came. coming back to New York was probably not going to be so viable, so we just stayed. And at that point I had been a docent at the National Museum of Singapore, which was awesome. You're guiding people from all over the world who has connections to Singapore, World War II.

And eventually I realized I don't know when we're going back to New York. And you know, a woman of a certain age, you can't go back to Wall Street and say, hi, I've been out of the workforce for five years. Can I have a job? So I decided to to do fee

A fee for advice, financial planning. I had the tools, I had the knowledge, I started knocking on doors. Private banks were like, yep, you're great. Do you want to join? You have to fly around the world and build a book of business and you have to sell products. Not not the world I'm from.

Most of the RIA equivalent are not US based. And I finally found one. Funny enough, I applied to be an admin. It was like, there's an American owner. I'll apply for an admin because that's what they're looking for. And I walked in and they're like, yeah, no, when do you want to be an advisor?

Ann Marie (02:57.368)

So I said I want to do financial planning for Americans. I'm going to charge them a fee. And the American owner said, that's dumb. No one will ever pay a fee. They want product, sales, commission, all hidden. The British owner said, yep, when do you want to start? That's great. So there in 2011, I started building a business and I still have, funny enough, my original three clients from 2011.

Started at one company, went to another company, and it got to the point where people liked me, they liked the advice, the direction, but they didn't like the name on the wall. And the name on the wall was always some local financial advisory firm who had branches in other jurisdictions and potentially people not giving fiduciary advice.

So I found a couple of people and I said, do you want to get your own license get our own license? And we went to Monetary Authority of Singapore who said, we're the future of Singapore, financial planning, and Avrial Wealth.

Got their license in, we got our license so quick we weren't actually ready. As US taxpayer, of course I wanted to start at the beginning of a tax year. You don't want to start. No, you would appreciate that fully. But I think we got our license in like September. And I said to MAS, can we actually start in January? Because I just thought the logistical nightmare. Like three months of reporting on a 5471. So we started in 2020.

Arielle Tucker (04:16.524)

Yeah.

Ann Marie (04:38.218)

January 2nd, and it was COVID. You know, two months later we stopped going into the office, the world shut down, and I think even though you know I'd had a bunch of US clients, COVID changed the trajectory because people were concerned about life, what was gonna happen. Death, life insurance, a no-estate plan, losing their jobs.

So we just had a bunch of inbound inquiries that helped, you know, get our word, our name out and the word out that actually we know we knew what we're talking about. So out of something as terrible as COVID, really helped launch Avrio. And Avrio, even though I'm not Greek.

Avril means tomorrow in Greek. And when you're in a planning firm, everything is about tomorrow, whether it's literally tomorrow or three years, five years retirement, sending your kids to school. You know, so much of what we do is future-based. So I thought Avrio really made sense. And here I am. Yeah, six six years later.

Arielle Tucker (05:51.138)

that's beautiful. It yeah.

It's amazing. I love hearing your story and you've been such an inspiration and a mentor for me in my own path. I'm really curious if we can go back to the regulatory part. I know that is a big I mean, it's so impressive that your firm has been able to register in Singapore and then it's also SEC registered, right? That is a really high bar to that that you've set. I'm surprised to hear how fast it was in Singapore. Was that just the way that your business was structured, or was there something unique about Singapore?

Ann Marie (06:04.048)

Yeah.

Ann Marie (06:21.39)

So no, so our original license, we applied for a financial advisor license, which is a retail license. It was a lower license. Our thought at that point was everyone needs a financial plan. We shouldn't cherry pick between are you retail or are you accredited? And as time went on, I mean, i in reality you're pretty much accredited if you're living in Singapore. It's an expensive jurisdiction.

The the regulatory threshold for retail is much higher. There was so much work we needed. Our professional indemnity insurance was actually more money than the revenue we're making from retail clients. So I just said we have to change and we submitted for a capital markets license, which is the full accredited.

We we didn't change our cap structure. We left our you know, the what you need for a financial advisor's license is four hundred and fifty thousand Sing in capital at all times in the bank. We just left it for the CMS Capital Market Servicing License, the accredited. And that came through, I think again in three, four months, but we were still pre the flurry of

family offices. Now it's about 18 months from what I've heard to get a family office license, which it can be a 130, a 13U, or capital markets. So there's such a backlog because of all of the money, I mean, and wealth pouring into Singapore. I think there's 3500 family offices, multifamily offices, and a lot of them are

Arielle Tucker (08:12.12)

Wow.

Ann Marie (08:17.034)

the multifamily offices might be somebody from a private bank who left and took their twenty, thirty top clients and run them in more of a more of a US way of managing money than from a bank, for example, but it also gives them opportunities into private equity, venture capital. I mean they can it's more flexibility than than what a bank can offer.

So that's the journey. I mean, the financial advisor's license was super quick, but still the conversion to our capital markets was quite quick. But we already had a track record too. They knew who we were, they didn't have to do diligence on us as owners. We weren't changing the cap table, anything. But Monetary Authority of Singapore is very strict. They have to approve every single thing we do.

Arielle Tucker (08:56.888)

Mm-hmm.

Arielle Tucker (09:04.888)

Yeah.

Ann Marie (09:12.87)

We are audited, we have quarterly financial filing requirements, which for a company who f who does their invoicing quarterly and arrears. So you invoice the end of a quarter and within ten days we have to have all of that information with MAS. So they keep us busy.

Arielle Tucker (09:36.162)

Yeah, yeah. A good a good compliance department, hopefully. Yep.

Ann Marie (09:38.576)

And then we and then we have SEC on top. And we now have GST, which is we have to charge sales tax.

Arielle Tucker (09:48.094)

Wow, okay. How do you do that on the planning fee that is billed from Wow, okay.

Ann Marie (09:49.606)

Yeah. So

Everything everything for anyone who's a resident in Singapore.

Arielle Tucker (10:02.028)

Yep. Okay. I I can r I can sympathize with that because we have that in Switzerland and we don't have it in the US and it drives me crazy.

Ann Marie (10:10.222)

It's hard, yeah. Yeah.

Arielle Tucker (10:10.784)

So yeah, yeah, it it it does it ch the those regulatory considerations are really important because yeah, it's going to impact also taxes as well. And can you tell me if if if someone's singing sitting in Singapore or they're thinking about moving in Singapore, why is it important that they look for someone who's MAS license? Like is that an important consideration?

Ann Marie (10:32.42)

Yeah, well, MIS regulates financial advice, so you are not supposed to give financial advice to any resident in Singapore unless you're licensed. Now, I think we all know it can be a bit fluid, you know, maybe somebody retains their advisor in the US, but what we have found is eventually the advisor in the US backs out in many cases. They can't

Arielle Tucker (10:47.885)

Mm.

Ann Marie (11:00.316)

They consistently can't give the correct information. You know, it might be okay for a year or two, but as time goes on, the the portfolio might be very US-centric because they're a US advisor, they're not thinking emerging, they're not thinking even necessarily in Europe. I mean, I think you've seen for a lot of global citizens, they come in with like 80% US SP 500 similar.

And that's not how a global citizen thinks. So the more the longer you're in Singapore, the more you're thinking kind of you're seeing the energy in Asia. It's young, it's vibrant, it's startup, and then you start looking at your advisor in wherever and thinking this might not be the best one for me. So

You know, and that's fine, you know, we're SEC, we're MAS, so people who come to us know that we have two regulators who we report to, and we're not just some financial advisor at some company who says, Yeah, I I can work with Americans. As a matter of fact, we see it all the time. They don't know tax, they try to sell products.

For us, the only product we would do is insurance. You you need term insurance, you need maybe whole life.

Arielle Tucker (12:25.966)

Mm.

Ann Marie (12:32.002)

for estate planning and health insurance. While we are licensed to do health insurance, we don't do it so much every now and then. We tend to work with a broker for that and then review it. We can also do art, antiques, valuable, so people who yeah.

Arielle Tucker (12:49.144)

Really? I didn't know that. Can you tell me a little bit about what that means when you say we do our inn antiques? Like, I don't even know what that means when you're saying that. How how do you actually help clients access those types of investments?

Ann Marie (12:56.112)

Yeah. Yeah.

Ann Marie (13:02.598)

Well well that's no, I'm I'm saying insurance for those. But yeah, we can also yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no. We can help clients with art. We definitely have partnerships for art and

Arielle Tucker (13:06.328)

insurance. Okay, sorry. Yeah, okay.

Ann Marie (13:15.43)

I would say a lot of our clients probably buy their art and antiques from outside Singapore. It's just a small market, right? I have one client who her jewelry comes from Hong Kong because it's a very robust diamond district in Hong Kong. but no, we insure it, so as part of somebody's financial plan, we'll we'll say, you know, what are your assets and do you have expensive art?

I mean the very ultra high net worth you store their art in the Freeport. And they might bring one piece in, swap it out, bring another piece in, but it's a climate issue. I mean, we're hot, humid, and it's destructive for f for fine art. But f I guess for us we have a lot of people with ten thousand, twenty thousand dollar bikes that get stolen. Or, you know, they're decent jewelry.

a lot of people have live in help and maybe don't store their jewelry safely, or people who come in the house to help, so it's you know, cleaners, whatever. So we'll say get a safe or insure it. Most likely you're not gonna be robbed walking down the street with a million dollar diamond, but you could lose it if you wear it traveling. So that's what we do. We help people ensure their valuables.

Arielle Tucker (14:36.012)

Mm-hmm.

Arielle Tucker (14:41.252)

that's a great, that's a great service. And you and you're absolutely right. I always think about so many of our clients, right? They have really nice sporting gear. They have the 20, 30, 40, 50,000 bikes. And it is a consideration. It is part of your financial net worth statement. So it is something to consider. I am really curious about clients who are traveling to make these purchases. Do they have to report that when they fly into Singapore? Like now you've landed, you have a million dollar diamond.

Ann Marie (14:49.916)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ann Marie (14:57.842)

Yeah.

Arielle Tucker (15:11.126)

That you didn't have before, is that something you have to like take into I would imagine you have to take into customs to report that? How does that work?

Ann Marie (15:14.914)

Yeah.

Ann Marie (15:18.318)

I would say that people of that level have the jewelry brought to them.

Arielle Tucker (15:23.874)

Okay.

Ann Marie (15:26.682)

So that's my experience. So what the jeweler does is we not right. Right. Yeah.

Arielle Tucker (15:33.398)

Okay, we'll we'll we'll skip that we'll skip that question. I'm just like I'm very curious 'cause I am not walking around million dollar diamonds, so it that is that is not my world. yeah.

Ann Marie (15:42.375)

I mean, but they bought it, they own it, right? So why would you have to claim it? It's your personal property. I think if you're bringing it in to resell, maybe, but I'm less familiar. I mean Yeah, that's a very good question and I don't really have the answer for that from a customs. Yeah, yeah.

Arielle Tucker (15:47.061)

Mm-hmm.

Arielle Tucker (16:02.316)

Okay, sorry. We'll go into things that I know you we can talk about. tell me about, I mean, what you were saying before. We see this so often with clients where they're they're moving abroad, they don't know, they're unsure of how long this is even gonna be. They want to keep their old advisor because they don't wanna change their total financial life. And I understand that, but at some point often their advisor or or they themselves will realize you know what, this really isn't working. So can we talk through some of the things that make maybe US

Ann Marie (16:17.361)

Right.

Arielle Tucker (16:32.46)

Singapore financial planning a little bit different than traditional financial planning. You already touched on the investment management aspect, and I think that's a really big one. But are there other things that maybe people are are not aware of, not thinking about, not asking the questions around?

Ann Marie (16:48.24)

I would say the the base level is the IRA to Roth IRA conversion. a lot of them say, you know, I don't live in the US, I can't contribute to an IRA anymore. You probably can, maybe even Roth, but not usually. We don't we don't really have that many clients who can go direct into Roth. But what they're not actively doing is the conversion.

Arielle Tucker (17:12.748)

Wanna pause. I wanna pause at that statement. I think that's an important little sidebar that I wanna highlight. Why can't they actually do a direct conversion, Anne Marie? A a a direct a a direct contribution. Yeah, so can we just break down yeah, thank you. So they make too much money, but it's also

Ann Marie (17:17.872)

Yeah.

Ann Marie (17:23.428)

A dire a direct to a Roth contribution because they make too much money. Yeah. So and even with the foreign earned income exclusion, they write it off. You'll see people who try to contribute because it looks like there's zero. And we're like, no, actually, you still make too much money. But again, we don't have

That many clients who are like the income level accredited in Singapore is 300,000 Singh, a million in investable assets, or two million if you you know are including property.

So it's a similar threshold as the US and we don't have that many. We might have one spouse who is not who's not accredited, but the other one is. But yeah, it's the income. They make too much money so they can't contribute direct to Roth.

They don't understand the mechanisms of the IRA to Roth IRA conversion. Deposit it, you know, put money in your IRA, let it sit there, don't take the tax deduction and convert it. All of that is non-taxable in Singapore.

Arielle Tucker (18:37.25)

Mm-hmm.

Ann Marie (18:39.94)

In some countries it could be, you know, taxable. The mech, you know, depending probably you have more experience with how it would look like in Switzerland or Germany versus Singapore. Singapore has no capital gains and no tax on dividends or interest. So they the only dividends they tax right. The only dividend

Arielle Tucker (18:58.018)

Wow, so gr some great planning opportunities then.

Ann Marie (19:05.03)

The so the dividend that you see the the most that comes up is I own my own company. I'm a director, I can take the money out as a dividend.

In Singapore, up to a certain point, that dividend is tax free, but that dividend is not a qualified dividend in the US. So people try to take out their profit from their company as a dividend and go, but it should only be a 23.8% tax bracket. We're like, no, it doesn't work that way. So we actually help structure people's businesses, how they take their money out. Like you're better off just taking it as a salary, your foreign-earned income.

exclusion. But when nothing is taxable from an investment standpoint in Singapore, then you should be doing your IRA to Roth conversions. Utilize the foreign earned income exclusion, the fact that you're not paying FICA anywhere or state tax. You just have federal

You know, we use tax plan software like all advisors, keep you in a tax bracket and we slowly chip away and get them into a raw. So when unless they're going to Germany or Australia, which is also why it's super important for planning. Where are you now? Where do you come from? And where are you going? Where do you think you're going? vessel plans of mice and men.

We're going to Australia. I'm going to send my kids to college in Australia. We don't do any Roth. And now you're sitting in New Jersey where the Roth would be really good. So we can't capture everything. But so much of what we do it versus the US. The US advisor is not going to understand that in most cases. So when we meet somebody, actually, I just had a call with someone who's referred to me. He has a solo advisor.

Ann Marie (21:01.634)

And an expat solo advisor and has never done any Roth conversions. Nothing. And they're fully intent on moving back to the US. So, you know, I just kind of went, you're not doing this, you're not doing that, you should think about this, right?

Arielle Tucker (21:10.062)

Wow.

Ann Marie (21:22.718)

fees that we would charge are about the same as the fees they're paying now, but they're not getting the strategic advice for somebody living in Singapore.

You know, and I think you've heard me say it's simple things. health insurance. Companies don't have to give great health insurance. You might have two hundred thousand dollars Sing max. That doesn't get you anywhere if an accident happens. So

A a local like the US-based advisor will say that's their problem. They can figure out their own health insurance, but really your financial plan fails if you have a catastrophic health situation, which could be mitigated for a few thousand dollars a year. Right? We'll we'll do a top-up plan, we'll do ten thousand dollar deductible. It you might pay three thousand dollars a year, four thousand a year, but

Your work policy can be used toward your deductible, but you have your risks covered. So many people focus only on the money, which yes, at the end of the day that's what you're gonna spend. But if you don't have that risk covered

your wealth may be hugely diminished. There's no social health insurance like a lot of countries. So you Singapore, I mean for Singaporeans and PRs there is some. But for expats there's nothing. Permanent resident. It's like a green card holder.

Arielle Tucker (22:54.562)

And when you say PR, I just want to define that very quickly. Permanent resident. Okay.

Ann Marie (23:01.602)

which is unique in Singapore because, say, an advisor in Hong Kong who's working with the Hong Kong PR, that permanent resident is for life residence. In Singapore, that is renewed every five years, and maybe every one year. So your PR is for life, but your re-entry permit is renewed. So, like next year we have to renew our reentry permit. And Singapore can say yes, we'll renew it or

No, and you have to leave.

Arielle Tucker (23:35.028)

Is there a lot of ageism then in Singapore where at some point they just decide, you know, you're just not valuable to our society? Thank you so much for your service. Y goodbye. Like, I mean, it it just I I have anxiety at this idea of like every year or every five years you are like back on the government shopping block. Like, what is that like?

Ann Marie (23:52.38)

Yeah.

Ann Marie (23:57.111)

So it's a small island. There's a space issue. Singaporeans have to come first. I think ageism maybe, I think earnings. When we speak with people, we say, what is your plan B? I want to stay in Singapore. Okay, great. What is your plan B? Because it is totally out of your control if

Singapore doesn't renew your re-entry permit. And I understand that it's a small island and they need tax revenue. And you know, maybe it's what you have in your CPF, which is your Singapore pension. Maybe that that's big, that can keep you in Singapore. Most Americans aren't going to be hoping to build up a huge CPF because it's not tax efficient.

Arielle Tucker (24:53.71)

Mm.

Ann Marie (24:54.01)

Right. So it's central provident fund. It you have different buckets. You have a medical bucket, you have a retirement bucket, you have kind of a spend bucket. Singapore structured it so your spend bucket can be used for down payment on property. You can actually use it to pay your mortgage. You owe CPF back. And this is again if you're permanent resident, which or Singaporean.

If you're an expat only, you don't have that access to that pension. So those buckets are really useful and they've structured it very, very well. But the ordinary account earns 2.5% interest in SING dollars. The special retirement account earns 4%. But you're if you're a US taxpayer in a 37% tax bracket, it's 4% less.

Arielle Tucker (25:50.147)

Mm-hmm.

Ann Marie (25:50.269)

Your tax. So our Singaporeans use it and they can invest. They can top up. I mean, it's a great tool and we use it for people who it's not going to affect their financial plan, right? It's great for Singaporeans, but for Americans, you can't invest it. You have the PFIC issue. Actually, we can't even open an account for anyone. And then beyond that.

You're you're just taxed quite high. I mean, you know, if you're not if you're in a lower tax bracket, then it doesn't make a difference. But most of my clients are there in their peak earning years. They might come over for a startup, startup goes public. Now all of a sudden your wealth is no longer startup wealth. Hey. And

Arielle Tucker (26:29.731)

Mm-hmm.

Ann Marie (26:44.914)

probably you're in a much higher tax bracket. It used to be per the American school, Singapore American school, that the average timeframe in Singapore for a US family was four years. I think it's longer now.

Arielle Tucker (27:02.846)

okay. I just I'm looking at the time and I w I feel like we could

Ann Marie (27:05.521)

Yeah.

Arielle Tucker (27:07.308)

We could keep talking about I have so many more questions about Singapore. We'll have you back. We'll do more conversations because this was really great. But I do want to just point out like what we were just talking about, you were talking about the different Singapore option around retirement and savings. This is all optimized for anyone, anyone who's not a US person, who's not still US connected. and this is really where you have the water cooler talk. What are you doing? What are you doing? How are you saving? How are you building wealth? We're here, we're all here making a lot of money. This is the time to to do it. All of your

Ann Marie (27:07.984)

We yeah. I know. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Right.

Ann Marie (27:26.45)

Correct.

Ann Marie (27:33.286)

Yeah. Yeah.

Arielle Tucker (27:37.215)

Colleagues are going to say one thing, and what's going to make sense for you is going to be a completely different thing. And it's not logical. It's not logical. And this is really where the value of a true expert becomes totally invaluable because you start going down these routes, doing these things, and then it becomes very expensive to clean it all up. last question before we go: if you are a US connected person in Singapore and you're just starting out and getting your financial life organized, what is like the first step? Like, what do they do first?

Ann Marie (27:41.564)

Totally.

Ann Marie (27:55.355)

Yeah.

Ann Marie (28:06.618)

So I think one of your other questions were what are the mistakes, right? So people land in Singapore, they think they're only gonna be there for two, three years, and they spend, they travel. And I get it, we did two expecting this was going to be, you know, one and done, but

Arielle Tucker (28:11.502)

Mm.

Ann Marie (28:25.33)

Time in the markets. If you're not saving any money and you're spending beyond your means, those two, three, four years can be material. So don't forget to continue investing. I say, and the other mistake we see is a lot of people say, well, I just have SING dollars accumulating in the bank. I didn't know what to do with it. I can't invest locally. Okay, but that bank interest at 0.01 is not helping you either.

Arielle Tucker (28:43.054)

Mm.

Ann Marie (28:51.812)

So continue investing. one

We pay taxes monthly in arrears. A lot of people don't realize that they when they leave, they have this big tax bill. So you always have to have a second pot of money because you have to pay your Singapore tax bill and you have to pay your US tax bill. It's not like your job here where they took it all out. So a lot of people don't have their tax money in reserve. So we see tax mistakes, we see too much cash, not

Arielle Tucker (29:18.638)

Mm.

Ann Marie (29:27.92)

Sticking to you know any type of investment philosophy. we also see getting sold products. You know, it's a product sales commission. We've had people walk in with 28 insurance policies. They cold call all the time. Usually I just say I'm an American, don't ever call me back, but they're they can pester you. Banks

They're they're the worst offenders. It's like, let's sell this endowment, let's sell this whole life, and you can fund it on leverage from your portfolio. I know I know you've seen it. I mean it's it's not just unique to Singapore. but that's how they they kind of hook clients in, and those are the mistakes we see because we have to unwind them.

Arielle Tucker (30:08.856)

Yeah.

Ann Marie (30:20.752)

What product exactly did you buy? I don't know. Let's call your RM. What is it? We don't know. Okay, that should be your first clue. Stop listening to your bank. Banks are necessary, but unless it's something you fully understand, don't invest in it. And that's I think a huge mistake as well. People open up a bank account, money goes in, the banker calls them and says, hey, you're an American. We have these three things you can do.

Should they do it though? That's the question. And they don't know because they have money sitting in the bank. They go, sure, sounds okay. You're my banker. Aren't you a fiduciary? Yeah. Yeah.

Arielle Tucker (30:53.698)

Yeah.

Arielle Tucker (30:57.974)

It's

It feels so good to do something and then but yeah, but this is really going back to this is where the fiduciary advice is so important. And again, finding those fee-only firms, even if you can just have a call and ask questions or ask questions to the banker until you understand it. And if you don't understand it, don't do it. That's that's my my my also my piece of advice. Anne-Marie, it has been so wonderful to have you on today. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your expertise. We'll we'll talk to you soon.

Ann Marie (31:12.646)

Yeah. Yeah.

Ann Marie (31:16.954)

Yeah.

Mm, exactly.

As always.

Okay, take care. It was nice seeing you. Thank you so much.