Ciprian Bratu is a Senior Partner at NEBA Wealth Management in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He is a Chartered MCSI, a member of the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment. He advises European expatriate professionals across Southeast Asia on investment structure, cross-border tax and pensions.
Ciprian Bratu works with British, French, German, Dutch, Spanish and Romanian nationals living in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines and the Gulf. His clients are typically senior professionals aged 35 to 55 in oil and gas, banking and technology, who hold a pension in one country, earn income in a second and hold investments in a third. He has lived in seven countries himself.
His starting position is that most expatriate financial problems are structural rather than behavioural. The client is rarely undisciplined. They are usually a capable professional applying advice designed for someone who never left home. The pension sits in one jurisdiction, the income in another, the assets are spread across three brokerages, and the estate plan assumes a country they no longer live in. Restructuring resolves that. Budgeting does not.
Ciprian Bratu’s technical work starts with investment structure. He builds portfolios from Irish-domiciled accumulating UCITS funds, which avoid the US estate tax exposure that US-domiciled funds carry for non-US persons. On tax, he works with Malaysian foreign-sourced income rules, the financial planning around Malaysia My Second Home, Singapore’s territorial system, Thai remittance rules for long-term residents, and double taxation treaty application across European nationalities. On pensions, he covers UK transfers, including QROPS, international SIPP consolidation, defined benefit CETV analysis and PCLS structuring. He also covers European pension portability, including AGIRC-ARRCO for French nationals, Riester and Rürup for Germans, and AOW gap planning for Dutch expatriates.
Ciprian Bratu publishes technical research for this audience, including country guides covering Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines, and a LinkedIn newsletter, The Expat Edge. His research library is published at Bratu Capital.
Areas of focus include, but are not limited to:
