viv jones

Hi
As we cannot sell our house in the current climate we are going to rent it out. I aim to keep a UK online current bank account for this purpose and other bits and bobs which I will link to a savings online account. I would think that I can control these fine from NZ moving money around as needed. I did contact ING and they said this was not allowed as you had to be a UK citizen. Has anyone else done this and are there any online accounts you could recommend please?
Thanks
Viv

kjames

we live in dubai at the moment, and have several uk bank accounts.

we get the statements sent to my sister in laws house, everything else is done online.

no problems at all.

K

viv jones

Hi Thanks for the reply.
Do you have one that can link a current account to a deposit/savings account? Any companies you would like to name?!!
Viv

Jan n Neil

The One Acc from RBS has an exellent online service

kjames

most of them

ive got a barclays account. The missus has a lloyds account. We've got a joint alliance and leicester account that the mortgage comes out of and a nationwide account (cant remember why and just keep a token balance in it)

I still have a uk credit card (mint). handy for paying for hire cars and the like when your back home.

The main thing is to keep an eye on them, as you wont be receiving any mail on it. A couple of the accounts we have opted for online statements only, so we dont get any mail.

K

teebrown

Yes we have a Nationwide bank account, do everything on line, we changed the address on it to our NZ, no problem - sweet as!

Genesis

UK banks will not apparently set up an account unless you are actually resident in the UK at that time. We have an account with Nationwide that we'd had in the UK for yonks and fortunately we left it set up with some GBPs in when we moved to NZ and it has been a real Godsend. Nationwide have no probs that we are resident in NZ and they even send all our statements to NZ!!!

viv jones

Thanks for all the replies....Nationwide sounds like a good bet then!!!
Thanks very much
Viv

CarolineSwan

We have a joint account and my single account with lloyds and gary has an account in abbey national..

omg the hassle we have had with bans getting put on our online account due to foreign transactions, it has been a nightmare, once we had locked in a rate with ukforex and ended up loosing the rate as lloyds cancelled the transaction 3 times even though i was on phone to them a trillion times, not one of them new what was going on . If i could be bothered swapping our mortgages out of lloyd to somewhere else i would . They have been fine for last few months so heres hoping they finally realised it wasnt someone in nz trying to steal our cash

With them cancelling our transactions really left us in the sh*t over xmas and new year, we were down to our last 6 dollars lol was a nightmare, some of that money was to pay for our new car but we were very lucky that the place we bought it let us keep the test drive car for almost a month free of charge

still had the best xmas ever on papamoa beach though lol



that said gary has had no trouble with the abbey

sorry for ramble lol , i was just so mad lol

drrobert

Another problem can be telephoning the banks, as many of them only offer an 0800, 0870 or 0845 non-geographical number. These usually can't be reached from overseas. Some banks publicise a 'normal' telephone number, otherwise you can use www.saynoto0870.com to find a normal telephone number for your bank.

NakiMan

Can I just stick a good word in for Natwest Bank

We have individual and joint current accounts, E-savings and credit cards with them and never a moments trouble.

They're perfectly happy for us to have a New Zealand address and have no problem with us using our UK credit cards in NZ or anywhere else for that matter.

Their online banking is easy to use and has the added advantage that you can manage credit card bills through the same system (Unlike Barclaycard!)

The only problem is that its not possible to transfer money directly to my NZ Bank account, and for that I use NZForex

littleal

We still use our First Direct account online and have had no probs.

We also use RBS International who remortgaged our UK house while we live in NZ, and give you the option of on-line multi-currency accounts. They are based in the Channel Islands and specialise in Expats. Not quite as user-friendly as First Direct but it's good to be able to access that sort of service if you want to.

Bo-Jangles

It's fine all the time there are no problems, we used Halifax Intelligent Finance and Barclays online for ages, however with both of them we buggered up or forgot the password and they flatly refuse to issue a new one whilst we are not in the country.

Halifax is okay, because we can still do telephone banking from overseas, but, Barclays has turned into a nightmare, because we can't use the 0800 from here and they won't close the account or let is have our money out unless we visit a branch in the UK. Their customer service in this respect has been pants.

Possibly a better option would be to use an HSBC account, because at least they are here in NZ.

P2L

I've phoned Nationwide before now and spoken to a real person and as others have said, ther has been no probs with a NZ address. Even sent a new Visa Debit card over to us

teebrown

Yes I too have spoken to nationwide and told them I am in NZ and requested various things, and all was good with them, so thumbs up for them (so far).