louisey66

Hi there,

just to ask, can i and should i open a bank account b4 i get 2 Australia?

obviously i dont have an address as yet so would that not allow me??

Thanku x

emelems

We kinda opened our account prior to arriving in Oz.. Wespac have a migration system whereas you open your account but it is not activated until you arrive in Australia. You then have to go into the bank and spend a couple of hours just going thru all the paperwork.. (can take about 1-2 hours)..

We didnt have an address either, but we did know that we were going to be arriving in Perth, so that is the branch we set up in.

To organise the inital setup from the UK, we phoned the call centre for Westpac (just google Westpac)..

You can transfer monies across but once they are in the account you can't access those funds until you activate the account. (We did one transfer to ensure that the funds transfered from the UK account whilst we were still in the UK, if you see what I mean)..

Em x

louisey66

thanku v much Em, think ill go 4 that x

CDM

You can open an account before you go. I've been in touch with Westpac here in London and am in the process of opening an account. You can activate it before you go, they just need to 'sight' you here in the UK with the appropriate forms of identification.

- CDM

the4ofus

I just did that on Wednesday altho we haven't transferred any monies yet. we are hoping to transfer in the next week or so, just to get the money out of our current a/c. When it's there I think I can spend spend spend

Lynn xx

maxtye

I've spoken to Firstdirect & they have no problem with me keeping my UK account but I'd assume you need an Oz account to pay your wages in & to pay your bills.

AberJazz

Hello

I opened one in Sydney when I arrived it took about 10 minutes to do the paper work and I had to deposit $500 into my current account to open the account and an instant access internet saving account at the same time.

To receive the cards and all the paper work took about a week, and it was a straight forward process. I chose ANZ as they had a great internet banking savings account that has a great rate and no strings access. I also got a free ANZ blue Elephant piggybank which was the deciding factor on why I chose ANZ

Take it Easy
AberJazz

brissybound

Ive opened an account with National Australia Bank.

Get emails from a guy who has been appointed our account manager.

Will go in on Monday and transfer 95% of our savings over.

There was no way in gods earth I was carrying thousands of dollars on me.

So far it all seems very easy.