SushiLover1

Many thanks to all responses - extremely helpful!

Pulaski

Your state pension is calculated based on "(years of NI contributions + years of deemed contributions* )/35 * £185

If you haven't retired yet you may be eligible to make additional years of contributions (roughly £160/yr for Class 2, or £725/yr for Class 3) for the current and preceding 6 tax years, or back to 2006-2007 if you are able to make payments before the end of this tax year (i.e. you have about 5 weeks!). If you make a Class 2 contrbution it increases your pension so much that you will get the same amount paid back in about 7 months of retirement. If you make Class 3 contributions it takes just under 3 years of increased pension to repay you the extra contribution, which is still a very good return on your investment. To enquire about additional contriubutions you should contact the Department of Work and Pensions, International Desk.

*assuming you stayed at secondary school until 18 that will be 2, or probably 3 years of deemed contributions.

Kinmac

Hello,

Are you able to give any update regarding this? I am in a similar position to you and would love to hear about your experience?

Hope to hear your reply

Hi there,

Do you mind giving me an update on your situation? Did you return to the UK and the payments were deducted via PAYE like previously described

Hope to hear about your experience

Deeny

Hi,

We have been in Canada since 2012. I sent an enquiry about NI contributions and then got a letter from the Student Loan Company. I had to pay back the balance plus about £36 interest. This was deducted from my salary here in Canada.

No fines, no hassle, just paid it off and it’s done and dusted.

Regards,

Kinmac

Hi, thanks for your reply

Can I just ask, when you say 'I had to pay back the balance' do you mean in one lump sum or monthly from your salary?

Sorry if this seems a stupid question

Deeny

Hi,

NP, a stupid question. It is income dependent. I had to complete a form detailing income and outgoings & had to provide my last 3 months pay slips; they then calculated a monthly amount to pay. I believe you can dispute this if you feel it will cause financial hardship.

They wouldn’t accept credit cards, so I just made a debit payment every month, but you can set up a direct deposit. They email you a receipt. It was all very simple. I did call the office initially and the guy on the other end was very helpful.

*** Sorry, I realized I said it was deducted from my salary but it wasn’t!

Deeny

Meant to say.. NOT a stupid question!

kevntrace

Went to open a Lloyd's account for my daughter on one of our annual summer trips to the UK. Daughter was around 6 years old at the time, and had a UK passport. We also own a property in the UK so providing an address was not a problem. However the Lloyd's employee serving us happened to live in the same street as our property, which lead to an interesting conversation! She mentioned she thought the property was empty, and didn't recall seeing us in the neighbourhood (we don't rent out the property, but it is regularly monitored/maintained by family in our absence). We still managed to get my daughter's account opened successfully.

Scv 1

Hi, just wondering if you had to pay your arrears? I'm considering a move back with my spouse, who has a student loan from 20 years ago that he never paid, reading online he would have to start paying the student loan back and would be on plan 4 but it also mentions that arrears payments can be up to £350 a month (separate to your student loan repayments). I've also assumed that the loan repayments would be calculated off of your current salary in the uk, not what your overseas salary has been (or hoping because h8s salary in aus is more than twice the uk one).

Thank you for any help! They don't have his or his families contact details so he is reluctant to contact them and give them a way to contact him as we haven't decided to make the move or not.

Helen1964

Doesn’t Lloyds require you to be resident in the UK and not just to have an address?
What are the penalties, if any, if a bank discovers you lied?
I know a few people here in France who - when threatened with account closures after Brexit - lied to their banks about their tax residency. Apparently without any consequences.

My concern would be that I’m no longer sure who talks to whom. Do banks pass on info about account holders to HMRC?
I noticed last time I tried to get some driving licence information from DVLA that there was a notice warning about data exchange with HMRC.

C.2s

We have Lloyds bank accounts and have declared our residency in Italy to them, and it's not been a problem (except for some of the add-ons like car breakdown cover etc). And then we had to fill in a form to confirm this for tax.

However we were existing customers before we left the UK. I imagine it might be different if you already live abroad and they want to credit score you before opening a new account that gives any sort of credit facility. I don't think that applies to the example given above as she was 6 years old. Maybe they will open a basic account with no overdraft facility and just a debit card?

durham_lad

That is exactly what we found as well. No problem having an overseas address if you have an existing account and then move abroad but to open a new account requires residency. These days proof of residency is word of mouth, as our daughter discovered when she moved to England last year. She sat on the couch at our place one evening and applied online giving our address, which was where she was living until she could buy her own place, and didn’t have to prove residency with a utility bill or anything, just answered “yes” to the question. When our son moved back in 2017 he had to prove residency and the bank we took him to, our bank, accepted a signed letter from us that he was resident and living with us.

tdrinker

Unknown is whether banks aren't asking for proof of address because they're relaxed about non-UK residents opening accounts despite it being against their policy, or are using technology to make checks themselves.

Here's an article listing the policies of several major banks:

https://www.which.co.uk/news/article...t-aIiEs1i49WTf

I'm not sure why banks allow non-residents to maintain existing accounts but not to open new ones, but it may be the "know your customer" checks for non-residents are difficult (= expensive / increased risk) whereas they already know existing customers. Or why Barclays have decided to close expats' accounts - not profitable, deemed higher money laundering risk? Whatever their reason(s), it must be possible that other banks will do likewise. Anyone living in the UK, planning to move overseas and wanting to maintain a UK bank account can minimise their risk by opening one or more back-up bank accounts before they move lest their bank follows Barclay's lead.

C.2s

1. Proving residency in the UK - how? There's no official single list of who is resident (although it's quite difficult to navigate life without getting on some database somewhere)

2. "... know your customer" - yes , I imagine so...both the examples listed above have contacts with existing accounts

3. Banks not accepting foreign residents - well as far as the EU is concerned Brexit changed things because the previous blanket agreement that UK banks could trade in the EU disappeared, and then each individual company had to make a decision about each individual country (following whatever rules that country has for nonEU banks). Complicated. Time consuming. Expensive. Therefore some banks chose not to deal with some countries in the EU unless it was worth their while

durham_lad

When we had to do this on returning in 2016 the clerk at the bank showed us on her computer screen the official documents that were accepted. They included a utility bill, a council tax bill, a lease agreement or a water bill with your name on it. There are other methods but I don't recall them. I'm sure all those options could not be absolute proof that you are resident but add to the weight of evidence.

In 2017 our son moved in with us when he moved back from the USA. He had to prove residence to get a bank account, and also to get a National Insurance Number which concluded with an interview at a major Job Center+. (We had to drive almost 50 miles to the one closest to us.) Both the bank and DWP accepted a signed letter from us stating he was living with us plus a copy of one our utility bills.