Topia Acquires Pearl Global Tech, Bringing the Leading Immigration Risk Engine and Knowledge Base to its Global Talent Mobility Platform

Topia, the leader in Global Talent Mobility, announced the acquisition of Pearl Global Tech, the leading independent immigration risk engine and knowledge base. Pearl Global Tech’s solutions perform immigration risk assessments in seconds, ensuring that remote and traveling employees have the proper visas to work at their destination. With the addition of Pearl Global Tech, Topia now simplifies compliance for the top two mobility risks—tax and immigration—enabling companies to support remote work and distributed work policies without relying on expensive, manual service providers.

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Following COVID-19 and the normalization of remote work, the mobility risks facing employers have multiplied. Topia’s latest Adapt survey, published in March 2022, found that 94% of employees believe they should be able to work from anywhere, so long as they get their work done. However, only one-third of employees say they report all work days outside their home jurisdiction. Unsurprisingly, 40% of HR professionals say they discovered employees working from outside their home state or country. Aware of this trend, immigration authorities have become savvier at identifying non-compliant visitors.

“Through the acquisition of Pearl Global Tech, we continue to execute our strategy of helping customers with digital transformation and compliance automation through our data-driven rules engine. This approach to Global Talent Mobility has produced rapid growth for Topia and more value for our customers,” said Shawn Farshchi, Chief Executive Officer at Topia. “Acquiring Monaeo, now known as Topia Compass, enabled us to automate tax compliance for business travel and remote work. Pearl Global Tech lets us automate immigration risk assessments before employees leave home. Combined, these solutions minimize the risks of travel and remote work from anywhere in the world.  And by offering end to end mobility delivery in a single technology platform, we can help companies gain efficiency and significantly reduce the high cost of external service providers.”

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Pearl Global Tech was founded in 2017 by Julie Pearl, a world-renowned immigration lawyer who co-founded the Pearl Law Group in 1995, growing it into one of the largest and most awarded global firms in its field. The software and its built-in knowledge base reflect Pearl’s over two decades of experience advising companies on business travel and remote work compliance.

By building this knowledge into software, Pearl Global Tech spares companies from the cost and delays of manual risk assessments, flagging within seconds the small fraction of business travelers who need a legal consultation for work authorization. Employees can run checks on Permiso, Pearl Global Tech’s visa assessment tool, which matches thousands of encoded visa rules and data points against the employee’s planned activities. The app specifies which activities raise an immigration flag, so that travelers can tailor their trip accordingly. Ultimately, Pearl Global Tech minimizes the risk that employees will be denied entry by immigration authorities or penalized for performing certain activities without authorization.

“We felt that Pearl Global Tech would not only achieve more scale and impact with Topia, but enable Topia to extend its lead as the world’s most comprehensive and automated platform for Global Talent Mobility,” said Pearl, who will join Topia as a strategic advisor. “Our combined technologies open the world to remote and traveling employees while minimizing the risks.”

A Global Mobility Leader at a Fortune Global 500 Company using the solution, comments:

“We’ve used Pearl Global Tech to learn what’s possible before our employees even start booking trips. In addition to the 60-second Permiso Assessment tool, the embedded global immigration knowledge base is the go-to source for immigration information. It will be exciting to see how Topia’s technology – coupled with Pearl Global Tech’s deep immigration capabilities – can help companies solve all types of mobility challenges in a single platform. I believe this will make life easier for HR and travelers, with better speed and value than the service-led solutions.”

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