How Quadcode relocated over 320 employees to Cyprus

Quadcode, an international fintech company with offices in Cyprus, the UAE, England, Gibraltar and Australia, recently shared its experience in establishing an IT tech hub in Cyprus, by relocating more than 320 employees, plus their families and pets.

The company has six brands that offer industry-unique solutions, such as brokerage services, a next-gen SaaS trading platform and neo-banking solutions. By having so many brands under our belt, Quadcode is familiar with managing a large number of employees. However, relocating almost 600 people to Cyprus is challenging – yet not impossible!

Why Quadcode chose Cyprus to relocate employees

As Quadcode’s Chief Financial and Administrative Officer Michael Gitsis said: “The company initially came to Cyprus in 2014. We wanted to operate our brokerage activities in Europe and chose to get the Cypriot licence because the regulatory environment was appealing for this type of business.”

The island was carefully selected as the ideal location to establish Quadcode’s IT hub for various reasons. Some of them include the company’s positive experience operating in Cyprus, as well as the good climate, the cost of living, the health and education systems, regulatory environment, and governmental incentives. The company has its headquarters in Limassol, as well as an office in Larnaca, and plans to establish its biggest tech hub in Larnaca in the coming year.

Challenges of relocating employees

As in every situation, relocation has its ups and downs. “Convincing people to leave their homes and families can be difficult, and many were hesitant to make the move at first. Also, the majority of the relocations occurred in the second half of 2022, especially after Russia introduced partial mobilisation,” Gitsis added.

Some of the challenges the company had to overcome included the availability of apartments for rent, but also of cars for employees to easily commute around the island. It was important to provide workers with a safe place to live, especially following the uncertainty created after the move of Quadcode’s tech hub from Russia.

The Cyprus migration department was probably not ready at the beginning to accommodate such a big number of relocated employees from so many companies, which made some processes longer than expected. “The island was not fully prepared for this influx, and infrastructure was not ready,” Gitsis said.

What helped in this situation was the hiring of relocation lawyers engaging with migration specialists as an initial step to support the company with the relocation processes.

On our end, resources were limited as we didn’t have so many employees before that were handling migration procedures, so the workload of each team member definitely increased. After a few months, we gained a lot of knowledge of all the steps we had to follow to complete a relocation, so we were able to handle requests internally and have a more transparent, fast and cost-effective flow.

Another important element of the relocation of employees is to have someone who understands the challenges and can provide support mentally and practically. That’s why Quadcode has relocation buddies who are really important for people going through a relocation phase.

How the company contributes to the Cyprus community

Quadcode is a member of TechIsland, a Cyprus-based non-profit IT association, and a partner of the first-ever Olympic medalist of Cyprus Pavlos Kontides. The company is also partnering with City Friends Club, an eco/tech community and has delivered speeches at local events like the TechIsland Summit. Quadcode is planning to launch its CSR 2.0 programme in Cyprus to give back to the community and the environment.

Gitsis added that “we are all here to stay. We’ve expressed this commitment to the government and to investors, who now need to build more schools, housing, and hospitals to support the growing population. We need to lobby both the government and private sector to encourage them to take up the glove.”

What we learnt from our relocation project

Relocation was definitely a challenging project for all the teams involved and we are now ready to achieve even more. We are doing everything we can to overcome the current issues, provide mental health support to employees and family members, and build relationships with local communities and universities to build a strong ecosystem.

Quadcode is always on the lookout for bringing together fintech experts to its team from the local workforce, and from other countries with the option to relocate them to Cyprus.

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