British Expats - Questions on bank accounts

British Expats (https://britishexpats.com/forum/)

- Moving back or to the UK (https://britishexpats.com/forum/moving-back-uk-61/)

- - Questions on bank accounts (https://britishexpats.com/forum/moving-back-uk-61/questions-bank-accounts-922098/)

Questions on bank accounts

Hi guys,

I'm moving back to the UK in the summer from the US. My wife (US) will join me once she has her spouse visa granted. To keep proof of financial means simple for her application I will be leaving my savings in my US bank account until after she has arrived in the UK.

So, I have a couple of questions I was hoping you wonderful folks could help with:

— Am I able to keep a US bank account open after we have moved back to the UK? (I am not a US citizen). I am happy to close this down if needed however, alot of my freelance clients are in the US and i'm thinking it may be easier if they pay me into a US account which I can later transfer to my UK account from there. Not the end of the world if this is going to be an issue, I can always ask them to use PayPal or do an international bank transfer.

— I still have a Natwest account open over there which I have kept active so I won't need to set one up but, any tips on transferring large amounts of money (£100k) from the US to the UK? Transferwise good?

Thanks!

Re: Questions on bank accounts

You will need to contact your bank and ask. We are both USCs but when I inquired of our bank in the US the answer was “no”, so we switched banks some months before we moved. Our son had a similar experience with his US bank and he also switched. Having a US bank while living in England works great for us as my private pensions pay into it.

The same applies to brokerage accounts. We were already retired so had no employer retirement accounts to worry about as we had already rolled those 401ks to IRAs. With our son he already had a brokerage account that supports overseas customers and as soon as he quit his job he started the ball rolling on his 401k to IRA rollover. The process didn’t complete until he was living in England because he left the country within days of quitting his job, but it all went smoothly enough.

Transferwise works great for us in transferring money over from the US to the UK.

Re: Questions on bank accounts

If you have access to HSBC in the US, you could set up an account with them, and then open one in the UK. Wasn't an option for me, but I think you can transfer funds between the accounts quite easily.

Re: Questions on bank accounts

I asked Transferwise this question about holding dollars CDN while I sorted a UK account out and they said its ok, as long as the funds are legal of course.
Then I asked HSBC about their accounts and it came to pass that there is a way of using a HSBC account outside the UK then sending funds to the account in the UK, BUT the exchange rate is a killer with the HSBC compared to Transferwise.
So open the HSBC account THEN transfer the main funds from Transferwise. Of course HSBC have a minimum amount they want in their account but it does vary country to country.