Beech: Three-sided platform
An immigration platform launching this week is aiming to help law firms attract “very strong leads”, in return for a monthly subscription.
Jonathan Beech, founder and managing director of Immpact, said the platform would also make it easier for lawyers and paralegals to navigate the new immigration rules.
Mr Beech, a qualified immigration practitioner and managing director of business immigration specialist Migrate UK, said he would have launched Immpact earlier this year, had the Home Office not announced an overhaul of the rules.
The changes, which came into force in April and apply mainly to skilled workers, increase minimum salaries and alter job codes.
Immpact aims to connect employers, recruiters and regulated lawyers with “pre-qualified global talent”, helping to eradicate overseas worker scams.
“We want to make it easy and quick for people to navigate the rules in real-time,” Mr Beech said.
“Lawyers and paralegals will be able to see which immigration category their client qualifies for. We trialled the platform both before and after the new rules came in, and it saves time significantly.”
Mr Beech said the main benefit for law firms was to be able to “showcase themselves” on Immpact, and receive “very strong leads”.
He said many people who live overseas took advice from unregulated immigration agents, who charged “extortionate prices” for services that were often “not rendered”, and ended up “ripping a lot of people off”.
Mr Beech went on: “We want to make sure that people who want to move to the UK can have direct contact with a regulated law firm in the UK.”
He described the platform as “three-sided”, in working for people overseas wanting to come to the UK, who could use the platform to “pre-qualify themselves”, businesses wanting to recruit them, and lawyers wanting to provide advice.
Law firms wanting to use all the tools offered by Immpact and put up a profile with details of their lawyers, will pay a range of fees, beginning at £40 per month for two people at the same firm and increasing for larger firms.
Lawyers who used the platform would be able to give feedback and help the service to “progress”. There would also be an advisory board, where lawyers could give their thoughts on other aspects that the platform could cover.
Mr Beech qualified as an immigration practitioner through the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner, having worked for the Public Enquiry Office of the Immigration and Nationality Department in Croydon.
He went on to work in the immigration legal teams of Big Four accountants Ernst & Young and KPMG, before founding Migrate UK in 2004.
He said the company, which is based in Oxfordshire and has 11 staff, had worked for Indian IT companies, American oil companies and now, particularly, life science companies. It also acts for individuals, such as actors and opera singers.
Mr Beech added: “I knew there had to be a better way to match pre-qualified overseas talent with genuine work opportunities and responsible UK employers – effectively a ‘talent’ match-making site which is designed to eradicate scammers to provide a global, trusted marketplace for talent.”
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