S and J W

We have been living in Canada for almost 33 years. We have been contributing to our UK State Pension and wish to open up a bank account to be able to make payments easier. Which banks are the preferred method for these sort of transactions. We have British Passports.

Pulaski

If you are not residendent in the UK it is unlikely that any UK bank will currently open an account for you, which means that your only viable option is something like the "borderless account" that Wise offers.

Wise will give you a Sort Code and account number that looks exactly like a UK bank account, which can be used to both send and receive payments, so which should meet your needs, however I would point out that Wise is not a bank and a "borderless account is" not a bank account* for the purposes of deposit insurance, so I would treat a borderless account primarily as a transactional service, not a place to hold significant funds.

* Wise's web site talks about how you are protected by "segregation of funds" which is great, but that is not the same as, nor IMO a complete replacement for deposit insurance, which pays back 100% of the first £85,000 of your deposit (UK rules) if a bank fails.

MB-Realtor

The UK International Pension Centre will send your pension to any Canadian Bank, either as GBP or as CAN$.

I phoned them and they were very helpful, everything was sorted out in one phone call.

​​​​​​https://www.gov.uk/international-pension-centre

HGerchikov

We have a UK HSBC account which we opened since we lived in Canada. It is linked to our Canadian HSBC accounts and we can instantly transfer money between them.

Danny B

HSBC, Barclays & Lloyds are the top 3 banks in the UK.