Global Money Transfer (Remittances) Market Report: 2011 Edition

Traditionally money flowed across nations through trade channels only. However, the globalization has become a reality in the past few decades. With fast opening economies and growing socio political activities, more and more people from underdeveloped or developing economies are working outside the countries of their origin. Remittance money has been growing by the years and is being considered an important financial resource for development as well as a social change by financial planners in developing economies. The worldwide inflow of remittances is growing continuously since past several years with the exception of 2009 which was characterized by global economic slowdown. The market is expected to grow at a CAGR of approximately 8.5% during 2012-2014.

The developing countries, which include both low and middle income countries, account for the majority inflow of remittances in the world. The huge emigrant population moving from the developing regions of India, China, Philippines, and Mexico make these countries the highest recipient of remittances. The largest source of remittance flow to developing regions is high income countries including the US and Western Europe, with the GCC countries fast developing as an important source.

With the evolution of the new world economic order, countries with high industrial and economic growth sought more manpower from all across the globe to meet their development requirements. Remittances from such migrating people have become an important part of economic upliftment of their countries. Scientific and industrial development achieving regular new landmarks has made global economic growth a reality. With more work opportunities, employment rate at global levels is improving and giving impetus to the flow of remittances worldwide. A flourishing remittance market is gaining strength from economic development of GCC countries. Remittances are movement driven and migration of working people world over is galloping.

Process of economic growth is face to face with new challenges too. Governments are finding imposition of tax on remittances as fresh source of national income which is a likely deterrence to the growth of remittance market. But on the other hand, new efforts are underway by international community like the initiative taken by World Bank to develop a comprehensive database on money transfer to help the remittance market. One new highly discouraging feature is imposition of regulatory requirements regarding AML/CFT.

The global remittance market is characterized by intense competition with numerous global and regional players operating in the market. The western Union Company and MoneyGram International, Inc. are the two leading money transfer service providers in the world. Furthermore, postal organizations also pose significant competition to the existing players in the money transfer industry due to their wide reach and low cost services.

The report analyzes the global remittances market with focus on India, China, Mexico and Philippines. It also discusses the major trends, growth drivers and challenges for the remittances market. The report presents the competitive structure of the industry and profiles major players with a discussion of their key business strategies.

By combining SPSS Inc.'s data integration and analysis capabilities with our relevant findings, we have predicted the future growth of the industry. We employed various significant variables that have an impact on this industry and created regression models with SPSS Base to determine the future direction of the industry. Before deploying the regression model, the relationship between several independent or predictor variables and the dependent variable was analyzed using standard SPSS output, including charts, tables and tests.