Toronto-based Toronto-Dominion Bank has a number of international operations, including Luxembourg-based Internaxx, and UK-based TD Direct, formerly known as TD Waterhouse, and thus has a keen interest in keeping abreast of trends in the expatriate investment market. Toronto-Dominion has some 22 million customers globally, of which it reaches around 8 million online.
The survey, which sought the opinions of more than 2,000 expat and UK investors from around the world, found just 5% said they expected Europe to be the best performing market in 2012, while more than half (52%) believed the global economy would fall back into recession this year.
Asia remained the most popular market among 46% of expat investors, followed by the USA (18%) and Australia (8%), according to a summary of the TD survey’s findings.
The respondents said their investments of choice at the moment, given the generally downbeat outlook, remained equities for both income (44%) and growth (41%), above any other investment class.
Annemarie Jung, CEO of Internaxx noted that the recent economic turmoil in Greece, Italy, Spain and Ireland would “no doubt have placed a heavy burden on both expat and UK investors”.
She said this showed how important it is that such investors be able to invest “in international equity markets”, as opposed to just those of their home countries.
Among the survey’s other findings:
- While expats chose equities as their top investment choice for 2012, they also revealed an appetite for “hard assets”, with a combined 39% saying they would choose to invest in real estate, commodities and precious metals in 2012. This compared to just 26% of their UK counterparts who said they expected to invest in one of these categories this year.
- The expats surveyed also expressed a greater interest in gold and precious metals than did the UK respondents, with 20% saying they expected to invest in such assets this year, compared with 12% of the Britons surveyed.
- When asked where they kept their assets, more half (58%) the expats surveyed said they held “some or all of their assets offshore”, while 48% said they “most commonly” used the services of an execution-only broker to invest.
The online survey, of 2,077 individuals, was carried out between 28 Nov 2011 and 29 Feb 2012 by YouGov. The respondents – some of whom were TD Clients – included 1,693 UK residents and 384 expats living in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, the US and Australia.
