AIRINC (Associates for International Research, Inc.)

When we help our clients redesign their mobility programs, we seek information on what employees value to inform how the program is structured and what benefits are provided.

While no one can predict when the COVID-19 outbreak will be contained, the pandemic has firmly stalled and reversed rising property trends across Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Singapore. AIRINC spoke to industry experts across Asia’s most dynamic business hubs to understand the unique characteristics of each market and what changes and opportunities lie ahead.

AIRINC has been providing weekly updates to spot rates of major currencies on our COVID-19 landing page. The global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic impacts landed a major blow to the global economy last month, made worse in light of volatility in oil markets sparked by controversy within OPEC+. The result has been historic depreciation in even traditionally stable currencies and unprecedented uncertainty. The last week of March saw unprecedented depreciation. While year-to-date depreciation of many currencies remains high, several major currencies saw an appreciation bump last week between April 6-13.

With COVID-19 putting a pause on typical mobility tasks, and more and more of us working from home, I’m finding that I have more unstructured time in my day. To try to make the most of this unusual break in normal work activity, I’ve been revisiting our 2019 Long-Term Assignment Benchmark and finding some interesting statistics and facts around common policy benefits, and the variety in how they are delivered. You might find that now is an opportune time to revisit your own policies and see if they follow the trends that AIRINC is seeing.

Perspective in Global Mobility is important, and we work hard to bring unique insights from across the world of mobility and the many facets it covers. The interview below is with AIRINC APAC's Client Solution Manager, Wei Wu, who is a Chinese National and completed a two-year assignment at our headquarters in Cambridge before transferring to our AIRINC Hong Kong office.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has been unprecedented, and its impact to world markets has been reflected in foreign exchange. The impact of COVID-19 touches every part of the economy, and can largely be divided into three categories:

My primary responsibility is to serve as the strategic point of contact for the AIRINC clients in my region. I work with them to look for ways to help them meet their goals and face their mobility program’s challenges. The COVID-19 outbreak has been a prime example of the latter in 2020. I have been working with clients to ensure they are informed about the conditions facing their assignees and the impacts to the data that they receive from AIRINC – mainly hardship and danger pay.

In our ongoing series, AIRINC Insider, we interview our mobility all-stars to share some of their unique insights after years of workforce globalization experience.

AIRINC is pleased to announce that Morgan Crosby has been appointed to the newly created position of Global Growth Leader. With the ever-changing nature of the mobility industry, her role will be to tie marketing, business development, and product management together to ensure our solutions meet today’s needs with an extra eye to the future of cross-border transfers.

Join AIRINC and your global mobility peers for a breakfast briefing discussion on the recent results from our 2020 Mobility Outlook Survey. From this session, you will learn more about best practices from 155 global companies who participated in the survey.