Offshore Executive Assistant: Tasks, Costs & How to Hire

KPMG Australia moved 200 of its 260 executive assistants to the Philippines. Not a startup. Not a scrappy agency. KPMG. The Big 4 firm with more compliance lawyers than most companies have employees.

If that doesn't settle the "is this legit?" question about offshore executive assistants, nothing will.

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Big 4 Accounting Firms Have Already Made This Call

KPMG Australia isn't alone. EY US reportedly routed its executive assistant work through South America and the Caribbean. These are firms where a single data breach costs tens of millions in fines and reputational damage. Their legal, compliance, and risk teams ran the numbers on offshore EA arrangements — and greenlit it.

70% of US business owners now use some form of virtual assistant, per a 2025 Hireva industry report. But most are still handing offshore VAs basic tasks — scheduling a meeting here, formatting a spreadsheet there. What the Big 4 recognized is that executive assistant work — real EA work — travels just as well as any other knowledge job.

The thing that doesn't travel? The $70,000–$90,000/year all-in cost of keeping a US-based EA on payroll.

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An Offshore Executive Assistant Can Handle Everything a US-Based One Does

A well-matched offshore executive assistant can own most of what a US-based EA handles. Here's what that looks like in practice:

Calendar management. Blocking time for deep work. Coordinating across time zones with clients, vendors, and investors. Rescheduling without the back-and-forth landing on you.

Email triage. Flagging what needs your eyes today. Drafting responses for your review. Unsubscribing from the junk. Keeping your inbox from being the first thing that derails your morning.

Travel booking. Flights, hotels, ground transport. An actual itinerary document — not a Kayak screenshot pasted into your inbox at 11 PM.

Meeting prep. Agenda drafts. Pre-read packs pulled together before important calls. Note-taking during meetings using Otter.ai or Fireflies, with a clean summary in your inbox 20 minutes after the call ends.

CRM hygiene. Updating HubSpot or Salesforce with meeting notes. Logging follow-ups. Flagging deals that haven't moved in two weeks. The work that should happen after every sales call and almost never does.

Research briefs. Competitive landscape summaries. Prospect company background before you get on the phone. A one-page brief so you walk into every call prepared instead of winging it.

Task tracking. Keeping your Notion or Asana board accurate. Chasing overdue items. Being the person who notices things slipping before you do.

Expense reporting. Capturing receipts, categorizing spend in QuickBooks or Expensify, and having your reports ready before your accountant has to ask twice.

Vendor coordination. Liaising with contractors, agencies, and suppliers. Following up on deliverables so you don't have to track down the same person three times.

Personal tasks. Restaurant bookings. Gift ordering. Personal appointments. The errands that eat 30-minute chunks out of your week and add up to hours by Friday.

There isn't anything on that list a US-based EA handles that an offshore executive assistant cannot.

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A Full-Time Offshore Executive Assistant Costs $700–$1,800/Month

Offshore executive assistant pricing has gotten more structured as demand has matured. Here's what the market looks like in 2026, using Philippines-based EAs as the benchmark — the most common source for English-proficient executive support:

• Entry-level EA — Calendar management, email triage, basic scheduling: $700–$900/month full-time
• Mid-level EA — Adds research, CRM updates, meeting prep, task tracking: $900–$1,400/month
• Senior EA — Strategic scheduling, travel coordination, project tracking, executive-level support: $1,400–$1,800/month

That range is consistent with what offshore staffing firms report for experienced EA talent.

Now compare that to a US-based EA. Entry-level US EAs run $55,000–$75,000/year in base salary — and that's before payroll taxes, health insurance, PTO, and equipment, per BLS occupational data and Glassdoor 2025 salary reports. The real all-in cost lands at $70,000–$90,000/year. That's roughly $5,800–$7,500/month.

A mid-level offshore EA at $1,200/month handles the same daily tasks as a $6,500/month US hire. That gap doesn't close.

One note: poor EA hiring is expensive no matter where the person is located. One 2026 analysis puts the average cost of a bad hire at $56,500 — consistent with long-running SHRM research on employee turnover costs. Vetting and onboarding matter as much as the price point. Getting the match right up front beats absorbing the replacement cost later.

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The Three Objections Every Founder Raises — and Why They Don't Hold Up

Objection 1: "My schedule and information are too sensitive to share offshore."

This one sounds reasonable. It isn't.

The same concern applies to any contractor — US-based or otherwise. Your scheduling information, email access, and CRM data are already handled by third parties: your email provider, your CRM vendor, your IT managed services firm. The risk calculation is about the contract, the NDA, and access controls — not the geography.

Offshore executive assistants who support law firms, financial advisors, and healthcare practices do this work every day. A well-written contractor agreement and basic access hygiene — role-based permissions, shared inbox access rather than full account credentials — address the real risks. Location doesn't.

Objection 2: "The time zone difference makes real EA work impossible."

This holds for some offshore arrangements. Not Philippines-based EAs.

Filipino EAs routinely work US hours or maintain an overlap that covers your core business day. And here's what most founders don't expect: asynchronous workflows often produce better output, not worse. You drop a voice memo at 7 PM with instructions. You wake up to completed work — the model working as intended, not a bug in the arrangement.

For more on structuring workflows across time zones, see our guide to managing offshore time zones.

Objection 3: "I'll spend more time managing the EA than just doing it myself."

This is a real problem. But it's an onboarding problem, not a VA problem.

Founders who try to delegate without any process documentation hit this wall immediately. Founders who build a set of standard operating procedures before handing things off almost never complain about management overhead. The EA executes the SOP. You handle the exceptions.

We've laid out exactly how to do that in our VA SOPs guide. It takes a few hours upfront and pays back in weeks of recovered time.

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The Open Marketplace Model Breaks Down for Executive-Level Roles

Upwork is fine for discrete project work. For an offshore executive assistant who's handling your inbox, your calendar, your travel, and your CRM — someone with access to sensitive information and zero tolerance for dropped balls — the open marketplace model breaks down fast.

The problems are consistent: inflated profiles, no real vetting on executive-level competence, and once you've given someone access and built the relationship, switching costs are painful.

What actually works:

Use a marketplace that pre-vets EAs for executive support specifically. Not just "has a profile and good reviews" — tested on calendar management, email triage, research briefs, and the tools you use.

Run a paid test project before committing. Give a candidate two or three real tasks: schedule a complex multi-party meeting, triage a messy inbox, produce a one-page research brief on a company. Pay them for the work. Their output tells you more than any interview.

Build a proper onboarding process before they start. Most EA relationships fail in the first 30 days because the founder assumed the EA would figure things out. They won't — and shouldn't have to. See our full onboarding guide for the step-by-step process.

Understand the contractor classification rules. An offshore EA is typically engaged as an independent contractor, which has specific implications for payment, documentation, and how the arrangement is structured. If you're unclear on that, read our 1099 vs. offshore contractor breakdown before you sign anything.

HireNewTalent.ai runs every EA through a multi-step vetting process before they appear on the platform — skills testing, English proficiency, tool familiarity, and a structured reference check. The marketplace stays focused on executive and operations support, not a general-purpose freelancer pool where an EA listing sits next to a logo designer.

The result is a shorter path from "I need an EA" to "I have an EA who's actually handling things." You still do the onboarding work. But you're not starting from scratch with someone who may or may not be who their profile says they are.

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One honest caveat: this arrangement doesn't work if your EA role requires daily in-person presence, or if you're not willing to document even a basic process before handing something off. Those are real constraints — and they trip up domestic remote hires just as much as offshore ones. If either is true for your situation, fix that first.

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When KPMG and EY move hundreds of executive assistants offshore, they're not doing it for novelty. The math is clear, the quality is there, and the operational risk is manageable with the right structure in place.

The only real question is whether you set it up properly — or repeat the mistakes that give offshore hiring a bad name.

HireNewTalent.ai makes that easier: pre-vetted EAs, structured contractor agreements, and a marketplace built specifically around executive and operations support. No sorting through five hundred profiles to find one person who can actually run a calendar.