"New Laws Come Out Constantly And The Answers Bring New Questions"

There are people in North Cyprus that ex pats can consult with to get information about the complex paperwork needed to comply with various issues or which you may just be curious about. It is always necessary to find someone reliable among these people who provide advice. So, would you like to know about someone who you can approach if you are here, or about to come here from a foreign country, who may be able to offer such consulting services?

We wondered how the lawyer, Havva Karabeyaz, and her company Ex Pats Consultancy Service, have reached that reliable point now and what kind of services they can provide.

Can we get to know you before talking about the work of Ex Pats Consultancy Service?

I am Havva Karabeyaz, I was born and grew up in London and in 1989 I qualified as a Solicitor and started to work there as a lawyer. At that time, we had to understand everything in the law offices, as a lawyer we would both go court and do the paper work. At first, I worked mainly in a Turkish area and most of my customers were Turkish. Then I started to work in the municipality, where I presided over complaints from the municipality and the government for a while. At the same time, there is a big children’s hospital there and I became involved in cases, I provided training and then I moved on to work with charities. New laws were coming out constantly and it was difficult for people to keep up with developments. After a while, I opened my own office and started to give a consultancy service. Overall, I would say that I mainly worked with children’s rights at that time.

Before we get to your work here, I’d like to ask, were you doing paperwork related to the real estate sector in London, did you have any information about it?

I’d have real estate contacts and paperwork in my office and I’d have lawyers who would work with it, but I wasn’t particularly personally involved in it. But since it was in my office, I also had an overview of the real estate laws. I used to come to Cyprus on holidays, for only 30 days usually, and supposedly to rest! However, there would be issues here that everyone, my neighbours and the surrounding areas wanted to consult about, and since I loved my work, my Cyprus holidays were actually spent working all the time. I've been consulting ever since...

So how did people reach you when you got here? How did they know you were available for consultation?

At first, there were people around me and their friends or people asking them. I've always been very open about helping people, I've volunteered to serve a lot of people and institutions. I was following the changes in the law, the newly implemented systems and writing on my Facebook page, only my friends could see it. Then my writing started to be shared on other pages. In groups for ex pats people who came to Cyprus. People started to recommend me to each other. I've been helping people who reach out to me online for a long time.

I bought a house here in 2000 and the contractor I bought the house from caused a lot of trouble, both with me and others of course. There was a lot of omissions in the law at the time and we worked hard. It gave me a lot of experience in this regard, so I started to look at the real estate laws here. When I came here for a longer stay in 2007, I was both a consultant and a private English teacher. But every once in a while, I'd go to England again, where I still had cases I followed. In 2016 I retired from there to come here.

How did you start officially working here?

It was not on purpose, I was retired actually and I was going to rest. But as I said, when official publications came out, I translated and summarised them into English, shared them with people and because I wrote clearly, for ex pats here always shared my writings with each other. Thus, I became known among many for ex pats here. Eventually, I opened the Ex Pats Consultancy Service when my job, which I had really started by helping people part time, started to turn more into full time work.

I met with Zirve Sigorta in 2018 when I went for my own health insurance, but an environment was created where we could work together. I took the insurance consultancy exam and passed it, and in a short time I started to work as a consultant at Zirve Sigorta. In other words I used to advise people, mostly voluntarily, but after that I started to provide this service under a corporate roof.

So you decided to move forward as Ex Pats Consultancy Service and a Zirve Sigorta consultant, right?

Yes. Before, together with a lawyer friend of mine, we used to follow the official newspaper, look at the news, and examine the new decisions. We are currently the only Zirve Sigorta consultancy in the İskele Region. It allowed us the opportunity to provide detailed insurance related services after real estate records, contracts, title deeds and other tax office transactions.

Property, car and health insurances are the most questions asked to me for Zirve Sigorta. The content of the policy is very important and Zirve Sigorta is very sensitive in this regard. We prepare policies in English for ex pats, we examine them item by item and present them accordingly.

In general, on which subjects do people need to consult on the most?

Obviously at the moment there are a lot of questions relating to quarantine, entrance and exit and residency applications. We help a newcomer from the beginning, with everything you can think of; how to connect the electricity, how to get a driver's license, and how to send a person back to England in case of death. Also, good references are essential in this business. There are many consulting firms in the market, people often get to know of these services based on each other's advice. Fortunately, we always get recommendations to from members of members of the ex-pats community and the local community.

Now that we have so many jobs, we have had to reduce slightly the amount of work we do voluntarily. Sometimes it just seems like a question, but the answer to that question usually brings up other questions; it all takes time! These people are in a foreign country and sometimes they really don't know what to do and it is necessary to give a full service. Therefore, we are trying to create an environment where we can provide our services in a more corporate framework. Those who want to reach us can also reach us via our website or our Facebook page.

Finally, could you give some information about Zirve Sigorta?

Zirve Sigorta was established in 1996 and started its operations in the same year. It is a leading company in the insurance sector, which was established entirely with local capital. Since the day it was founded, the company has continuously strengthened its structure as it aims to increase the service quality. Since its financial structure is strong, it draws an honest company profile that can compensate real damages in a very short time. In addition to many fire and accident damages paid in the past, Zirve Sigorta has compensated the first and biggest bank robbery of the TRNC, in the shortest time possible. With Zirve Sigorta, of which we are very happy to be a part, we continue our service by maintaining our respect within the sector and always striving to raise our quality.