There are plenty of expats in Asian banking. But not many are recipients of housing allowances, school fees and free flights back home.

There is no such thing as a standard expat package, but a fantasy expat arrangement might include everything from housing and tax exemption to international school fees, annual flights back home, club memberships and debentures. Some banks will even offer to pay the expat’s pension in their home country.

So how do you negotiate this generous set of allowances to supplement your salary and bonus? It’s largely down to scarcity value. Gary Lai, manager of front-office banking at Robert Walters Singapore, says the lucky recipients of expat packages today are usually either very senior or have specialist skills, such as credit structuring and quantitative analysis – although redundancies in Europe and the US mean credit structurers, in particular, may be a little cheaper to come by in future.

Negotiating an expat package is also about playing the ‘hardship’ card. Amanda Lote, director at Profile Search & Selection, says people locating from Hong Kong to China can claim life will be harder and walk away with tax equalization and school fees thrown into the package as a result.

It will help to have local market knowledge – after all, you can’t claim for hardships that you don’t know exist. Recruiters (not unpredictably) therefore suggest consulting them before you enter into benefit negotiations. Otherwise you run the risk of coming across as having “unrealistic expectations”, warns Lai – and no one wants that….