Pulaski

FIFY

As we discussed above, that is almost certainly an error and/or training issue for the bank.
That is incorrect, but for small US banks international transactions will probably be routed through a regional bank, and then through a large commercial bank such as Chase or Citi, and then to/from a major bank in the country sending/receiving the transaction. It is possible that there could be five or six banks in the chain.

morpeth

I came across this recently, bank in UK says they must have Swift code or correspondent bank to be able to wire the local bank, the local bank states they have neither and both are unnecessary.

BritishGuy36

As stated it is not a legal requirement, or even one that Fifth Third insists on. You probably just got a "low information" teller or someone who hadn't been trained well and wasn't for escalating it to someone who knew what they were doing.

In all fairness the vast majority of banks probably never (or almost never) come across non-USCs wanting to open an account.

Pulaski

Sorry, that is simply NOT TRUE. It is possible, though not likely IMO, that they don't have a SWIFT code, but for many branch level staff you might as well have been talking in Greek if you asked them who their correspondent bank is!

It is not possible to operate a bank without at least one correspondent bank - it is how banks move money. ..... It would be like having a phone without a phone service provider, or having a mailbox on a private drive with no mail delivery service.

morpeth

Good point about the unfamiliarity, I have often seen over the years visitors presenting passports as ID and being asked if they could present a driver's license instead..