CXO INSIGHT

Can you tell me more about Fragomen ?

Fragomen is the world ' s largest specialist provider of immigration services . We have just under 6,000 people in 62 offices around the world . We work with a huge range of clients from the largest global companies , many of which will be household names , right through to the smaller start-ups and private clients as well . Our goal is really to help our clients with their immigration needs .

At a corporate level , we ' re helping our clients manage immigration programmes through a range of consultancy and advisory services . As you can imagine , businesses have had loads to react to in the last several years from the pandemic to the situation in Ukraine and Brexit . All of these things have impacted mobility and so it ' s really our job to help our clients through these really challenging situations .

Kelly Chua , Director at Fragomen

We do that through using our proprietary technology to provide our clients with data , reporting and analytics , to help them make the process of moving people around the world as efficient and as easy as possible . Because very much at the heart of everything is this human element . It ’ s a massive decision for someone to relocate to another country and often the immigration aspect – applying for a visa – is just a tiny part of that process . But nonetheless , if you get it wrong , it has a huge impact .

How has UK immigration changed since Brexit ?

Since Brexit , the government has introduced a whole new points-based immigration system . One of the big concerns for employers from an immigration perspective was the impact on the labour market with Brexit as free movement ended . Suddenly EU nationals were faced with having to apply for a visa to live and work in the UK . As you can imagine , that meant there was this huge pool of labour that suddenly had a barrier to entry , to moving , to living and working in the UK .

And actually , the new system in many ways , has had to be much more accessible than the old system . For example , there used to be a cap on the number of overseas workers that could come to the UK as a sponsored worker if they were a non-EU national . That cap was set at 20,700 people per year . That cap has now been completely removed . There were obviously some caveats and exceptions so that was never really the strict limit in terms of numbers . But nonetheless , there ' s now no limit whatsoever .

Fragomen is a worldwide specialist provider of immigration services and it aims to take the guesswork and uncertainty out of the process of relocating to another country . The company has a huge range of clients from global names to startups . Kelly Chua , Director at Fragomen , spoke to Intelligent CXO about how UK immigration has changed since Brexit and how the current policies support the technology sector . She also explains how start-ups can access global talent and how they , too , can navigate the process .

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