The past fortnight has an exciting period for FPS, as the team launched the 9^th annual HSBC Expat Explorer survey. The survey collated answers from people from all corners of the globe to paint a full picture of the expat community.
Singapore maintained its place at the top of the overall league table, with 62% of expats saying it is a good place to progress their career and 66% saying they had seen an increase in their quality of life. Expatriates in Singapore enjoy some of the world’s best financial rewards and career opportunities, while benefiting from a safe, family-friendly environment.

As a global organisation with a network made up of 86 offices in 48 countries H+K is not shy of an expat or two ourselves. On launch day many of the expats within the agency were eager to see how the UK compared to their home countries, much to the delight of the HSBC Expat team. While our colleagues learned more about this year’s findings, the campaign team were hard at work securing coverage and sharing the responses of over 25,000 expats with the wider expat community, media and other interested parties from 45 different countries around the world, making it one of the largest surveys of its kind.

Our research revealed that New Zealand stood out as the greatest location in terms of experience, with 73% of expats in the country seeing an improvement in their quality of life. The best performing for expat families was Sweden, where 75% of expat parents said their child’s quality of life had improved.

This year’s survey also explored the opinions and experiences of expat entrepreneurs and millennials. Surprisingly the survey found that many entrepreneurs are setting up shop abroad in pursuit of a better quality of life, rather than to increase their profits. Millennials also led the search for purpose abroad, with younger expats being the most likely of all age groups to move in search of greater fulfilment, and many succeed in finding it.

Such a wide ranging survey provides numerous conclusions and talking points, much of which can be found in the Expat Explorer global report. However in our ever-globalising world what we can all draw from the report is that living and working abroad can still be a richly rewarding experience, both personally and professionally.

Has your curiosity been sufficiently sparked? Expats’ ratings of 45 host countries are available to explore online through the Expat Explorer interactive tool.