International Banking
 

Could anybody give me advice on opening a UK banking account from Canada .Would like to have one in place in order to deposit my UK pensions before I return...................

Re: International Banking
 

You can't usually open a bank account until you're resident (and have proof of that residency), I think HSBC may be an exception if you have the funds for one of their premium accounts, and have a branch near you?

Or if you just need to transfer funds then use something like Transferwise until you can get your UK bank account set up.

HTH.

Re: International Banking
 

+1

Transferwise (aka Wise) has a borderless account option which some here have used successfully.

Re: International Banking
 

Thank you so much seem to be wading through cant thank people on this forum enough for there help

Re: International Banking
 

After using Transferwise very successfully for years to do currency exchange, I finally opened a Wise multi currency account last week. You can hold balances in up to 50 different currencies in a single account.
So far I have a created sterling pot and a euro pot.
My account comes with a UK bank account number, sort code, etc. so one could definitely deposit pensions, etc. in it.
You can choose whether you want a Visa card or MasterCard. Mine arrived within 2 days.
Am very pleased with it so far. Always useful to have an extra bank card.
Also, I intend to keep only smallish amounts in this account and use it for all my online purchases so nobody can clear out my main bank account.
I think it’s a great solution given the difficulty/impossibility of opening a UK bank account as a non-resident.
Wise is a tech firm, not a bank so not covered by the UK government compensation scheme (which protects the first £85 000 you hold with any given banking institution). It is however regulated by the FCA.

Re: International Banking
 

Brilliant, thanks for taking the time to let us know.

Re: International Banking
 

You're most welcome.
But I'll shut up now because I'm starting to sound like an advert.

Re: International Banking
 

The part about them not being a bank and therefore not being covered by the Government compensation scheme sort of worries me, as we would be looking to transfer the proceeds from a house sale in the US over to a UK account on this.... umm, maybe not.... :unsure:

Re: International Banking
 

i think the Wise Borderless account gets you started and once over you can start getting a mobile phone plan, building a credit score etc. You can leave the house money in the account in the USA or Canada and if you don’t have FCA covered accounts by the time you are buying a house then use Wise to send the money from your overseas account to buy the house.

once we were resident we were able, within a few months to open several savings accounts, to move large sums over because the FCA only covers £85k per bank (account?)

Re: International Banking
 

Thanks mate; in all reality my wife & kids will have to stay behind in the US (with her family) while I travel ahead to NI to begin working over there...in that scenario, she can be here (US) to keep the house money in our US bank accounts until we need to move it to buy/rent over there, by which time I should have been able to open a UK account to receive the Trans-Atlantic transfer

Re: International Banking
 

I think it’s £85k per individual, per institution (£170 000 in total for a joint account).
So best not to hold more than the maximum with any one bank/building society.

Cainess - would love to hear more about your move back to NI. Am heading over to Crawfordsburn next week. They’re sweltering in the heat apparently.

Re: International Banking
 

So it is, thanks for that.

No upper limit for using NS&I, which is backed by the UK Treasury, although when we first got back in 2016 they didn’t allow USCs to hold accounts with them. Recently they decided to spend some tax payers money and get FATCA compliant with USC accounts. (It’s a lot cheaper to be FATCA compliant by simply denying accounts to USCs)