For an internationally mobile client, supporting an ageing parent is not simply a larger version of a domestic problem. It is a structurally different one, and the difference sits in four places a domestic plan never has to deal with.
The first is currency. The client earns in dirhams, pounds or dollars and pays for care in rand, rupees or euros, so the cost of supporting a parent moves with the exchange rate rather than with the household budget. A 15% currency move is a 15% increase in a fixed monthly obligation, arriving without notice and with no ability to reduce it.
The second is entitlement. Cross-border families rarely have access to reciprocal state or social care support on either side. The client is not resident where the parent needs care, and the parent has no claim where the client pays tax. The cost falls entirely on the family.
The third is access. Exchange control, remittance costs and reporting requirements determine how quickly money can move and how much of it arrives. In some corridors that friction is trivial. In others it is a planning constraint that shapes what support is even possible.
The fourth is timing. Where a parent’s own assets sit in another jurisdiction, succession or incapacity processes can delay access to those assets for months, at precisely the point they are needed to fund that parent’s care. The family ends up funding a liability the parent’s own balance sheet could have covered.
The scale of this is already visible in remittance data rather than in financial plans. Visa’s 2025 remittance research found that 95% of UAE residents send money abroad at least once a year, close to half of them to meet family needs. A white paper commissioned by Friends Provident International made the causal point plainly: where the parent’s home country has a weak pension system, expatriates direct income towards supporting parents and children instead of starting a retirement plan of their own.
That is the mechanism worth understanding. A retirement shortfall does not stay with the generation that failed to fund it. It transfers to the next balance sheet along, and in international families it crosses a border on the way. The provision gap driving it is not confined to one market. In South Africa, industry estimates put the proportion of people on track to retire comfortably at around 6%. The United Kingdom has roughly 1.4 million sandwich carers on official figures. Care is expensive in every one of these markets, and it is usually needed for longer than families assume.
The cost to the client is rarely the visible transfer. It is the contribution that quietly stops. Money withdrawn from a plan during a client’s peak earning decade is the most expensive money they will ever give up, because it has the longest runway left. The client solves this decade’s problem by recreating it for themselves in twenty years’ time.
For advisers, this is not only a client welfare issue it is a logistical and technical one. Unplanned parental care is drawdown no cashflow forecast anticipated, funded from the liquid part of the portfolio first. It is unscheduled decumulation from clients who are supposed to be accumulating. It also triggers relocation. Ageing parents needing support is among the leading reasons expatriates consider returning home, and a client who repatriates unexpectedly incurs unplanned costs.
Four things should be standard practice rather than exceptions. Ask about the financial position of the generation above the client, because a plan built without it is incomplete. Stress test for a five-year parental care event with the same rigour applied to a market fall, since one of those is considerably more likely than the other. Ring-fence the client’s own retirement funding before family support is committed, because the contribution that gets cut is almost never reinstated. And structure cross-border support deliberately, so currency, tax and exchange control are decisions rather than accidents.
We stress test portfolios against markets. We should be stress testing them against families needs.
Paul Mitchell is managing partner at NEBA Private Clients
