India. Recruiting Indian citizens for work abroad requires registration with the Protector General of Emigrants under section 10 of the Emigration Act 1983. The price of entry: a bank guarantee of ₹50 lakh, a registration fee of ₹25,000, and a certificate valid for five years. A reduced route exists — security of ₹8 lakh — but it permits recruiting no more than 100 workers for the whole registration period.
Nepal. DoFE grants pre-approval after the agency has received a demand letter from the employer. The demand letter itself first travels an attestation chain: the Nepali mission in the destination country, then Nepal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The law then requires the vacancy to be advertised in a national daily newspaper, and only after that is the list of selected workers drawn up.
UAE. Administrative Resolution No. 26 of 2022 requires a bank guarantee of not less than AED 300,000 throughout the licence validity for mediation agencies, and not less than one million dirhams for temporary employment and outsourcing agencies or a combination of both activities.
Philippines. POEA no longer exists as a separate body: RA 11641 created the Department of Migrant Workers, signed on 30 December 2021 and effective from 3 February 2022. Landbased licensing still rests on the Revised POEA Rules of 2016 — paid-up capital of ₱5,000,000, an escrow deposit of ₱1,000,000, a provisional licence valid for a non-extendible two years, and a regular licence running up to four years in total from the provisional issue date.
What these four lists share matters more than how they differ. A registration certificate, an attested demand letter, a bank guarantee and an approved contract are issued by a state or a bank. None of them is generated in your software, and none of them moves faster because you automated it.
| Corridor | Regulator | What opens the process | Financial entry |
|---|---|---|---|
| India | Protector General of Emigrants, eMigrate portal | Registration Certificate, 5 years | BG ₹50 lakh; fee ₹25,000 |
| Nepal | Department of Foreign Employment | Pre-approval on an attested demand letter | Licence + deposit by agency category |
| UAE | MOHRE | Agency licence under Resolution 26/2022 | BG from AED 300,000; from AED 1m for outsourcing |
| Philippines | Department of Migrant Workers | Licence: provisional 2 years, then up to 4 | Capital ₱5m; escrow ₱1m |
Where we held back. DMW is gradually replacing the inherited POEA rules with its own — a draft of the seabased rules has already been published — so treat the landbased figures as current but moving. Deposit amounts for Nepali agencies vary by licence category and have been revised, so we do not quote one here: that number is checked with DoFE on the day you file, not in someone else’s guide.
This is the part of the regulation recruitment software vendors pass over in silence, although it decides whether their product makes sense for an agency at all.
India: the service charge collected from an emigrant is capped at wages for 45 days under the employment contract, subject to a maximum of ₹20,000. Nepal: since July 2015 the “free visa, free ticket” policy covers seven destinations, shifting recruitment costs to the employer, and the agency may charge a worker at most NPR 10,000 — and only where the employer has not paid the agency’s service fee. Under the bilateral agreement with the UAE, recruitment is free of charge to the worker entirely. Philippines: the placement fee equals one month of basic salary, is not collected from domestic workers or in jurisdictions that prohibit such fees, and may be charged only after the approved contract is signed.
Put those together. Revenue per placed person is fixed by the regulator and does not rise with how well you perform. The one variable still under your control is how many staff-hours your agency spends per placement. That is why automation in this niche honestly sells not as “place more for more”, but as “spend less on the same placement”. In a corridor with a revenue ceiling, any other promise is mathematically empty.
| Corridor | Ceiling on worker-paid fees | Condition |
|---|---|---|
| India | 45 days of wages, max ₹20,000 | Per the emigrant’s employment contract |
| Nepal | NPR 10,000 | Only if the employer has not paid the agency fee |
| Nepal → UAE | Zero | Bilateral agreement: employer bears all costs |
| Philippines | One month of basic salary | After contract signing; not from domestic workers |
Agencies tend to read the bank guarantee as a one-off barrier at the door. In the text of the regulations it works differently.
In the UAE the ministry is expressly empowered to allocate the whole guarantee or part of it to settle arrears and payments due from the agency as a result of breaching its obligations or failing to comply with instructions. The guarantee renews automatically, and an insurance scheme is permitted as an alternative.
In the Philippines the escrow deposit answers for all valid and legal claims arising from employment contracts, for violations of licence conditions, and for fines imposed. Renewing a licence with pending cases means topping the deposit up: ₱50,000 per case for one to five cases, ₱75,000 for six to ten, ₱100,000 for eleven or more, with a total ceiling of ₱2,000,000.
The practical conclusion is plain. A breach here is not a letter of warning but money leaving a deposit you are then obliged to replenish in order to keep the licence at all. Which is roughly why “we track this in a spreadsheet” stops being an acceptable answer at the moment an agency crosses into its second corridor.
The line does not run between hard and easy. It runs between what the state issues and what you do yourself before and after.
Filing is done by the registered person. The system earns its place before the filing — assembling a complete packet and not missing a date — and after it, by recording exactly what went out and when. In a licensed corridor, a promise to “file for you” is a risk to your licence, not a convenience.
That is precisely the reason. An unlicensed operator has nothing at stake; you have a real sum on deposit that the regulator may draw against your breaches and that you must then replenish. Here the cost of discipline is measured in money.
Because in India you may charge a worker up to ₹20,000, in Nepal NPR 10,000 and not always, and on the Nepal–UAE route nothing at all. A single shared funnel averages an economy that does not actually average.
Yes, noticeably. DMW is gradually replacing the inherited POEA rules, and amounts and categories get revised. So we give the mechanism and the primary source, and we recommend verifying the specific figure with the regulator on the day you file.
No. We are a vendor, not a recruiter and not an adviser. Your licence number stays on your materials, regulated decisions stay with your consultants, and the system is wired so a bot cannot stand in for either.
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