UAE’s British expats unsure about effects of Brexit vote

The British pound has been on an exchange rate roller coaster since the referendum was announced. Ahmed Jadallah / Reuters

ABU DHABI // British expatriates voiced uncertainty on Wednesday about how the outcome of the referendum would affect them.

Abu Dhabi resident Daniel Whiffin said a year of debate had failed to give him a clearer picture of what was at stake.

“Honestly, I still have no idea which would be best,” said Mr Whiffin, an aerospace engineer from Colchester in Essex.

“The problem for me is there are very few facts and just speculation from both sides.

“Not one person on either side of the argument can tell me what will happen if the UK leaves. For me to make a decision without facts is impossible.”

Remain supporter Zee Shaun Aslam, who works in financial planning with Devere-Acuma in Abu Dhabi, believed the campaign by his side had failed to ­influence wavering voters.

“I think they have been given too much conflicting information, which is causing a lot of hesitant voters,” he said, citing a recent poll that found 13 per cent of voters were still undecided.

“They will be the deciding voters in which way the results go. It’s that close at the moment.”

Many Britons have expressed concerns about how the result will affect their investments, said Hamzah Shalchi, a regional manager at Guardian Wealth Management.

“A lot of our clients are worried about what might happen,” he said. “It’s the unknowns, the things they aren’t sure about.

“Their main concerns are whether their investments will drop in value. Will there be ­another big correction in the market? The fact of the matter is, if the exit does happen, we will see the pound drop in value, but a lot of markets are priced in for the situation if it does arise.”

He said because many of his clients were paid in dirhams, which are pegged at a fixed rate to the US dollar, they would be protected from a possible slide in the value of the pound.

Mr Shalchi said his company had been converting assets into cash to protect clients from volatile markets, something he ­advised other expats to do should the Leave campaign win.

“Our fund managers are holding between 30 to 35 per cent cash at the moment, because of the uncertainty, and the vast amount of money that is held is pension money,” he said.

Conversely, he said a vote to stay in the EU could provide a boon to the UK economy after a year of “underperformance”.

Since the referendum was announced in February, the pound had been “on a volatile roller coaster” against other currencies, said David Swann, at foreign exchange retailer Travelex.

He said there had been an abnormal increase in residents switching dirhams for pounds or dollars, something probably “fuelled by the uncertainty that the referendum has caused”.

“A month-on-month yearly comparison shows that we’ve seen a 35 per cent uplift in orders for British pounds and 18 per cent uplift in order for the US dollar,” he said.