miketsp

I've been non resident for many years and I still have an investment portfolio with Barclays Wealth (since 1988) and a Current Account (since 1965) with Barclays UK, the latter being used to receive 4 small UK pensions.
I just received a phone call from my portfolio manager advising that Barclays will no longer deal with Brazilian residents (not clear if this applies to other countries) and there is a letter in the post giving me 6 months notice to zero my portfolio.
So I started researching on the Internet and see that for expats there are no new options with true UK banks and I will have to move to Barclays International or HSBC International.
Anybody already looked at the pros and cons of these two?
Any other simple options?
Thanks

mikemike

If these two International banks are based in Chanel islands then you may wish to investigate the full costs of probate. there was a time they could be savage. Are you still UK domiciled for IHT purposes?

miketsp

Thanks mikemike, that's a good point however I'm non-UK resident and have been for many years. My situation is pretty simple, just spouse and one child which means that living in Brazil it's actually better not to write a will, the split being determined by the law. Here if there is no will the heirs simply go to a Public Notary and sign an agreement with the distribution of possessions. Including property transfer this can all be resolved in less than 90 days. OTOH if there is a will then it becomes a judicial process with typical time scale of 1-5 years! In this context I went on the Internet and looked at the procedures for the UK, Isle of Man and Jersey. As both Isle of Man and Jersey want to attract investors they have simplified probate schemes for my simple situation. I'd probably face more issues and bureaucracy in the UK.

My main concern at this moment, when comparing Barclays and HSBC, are the fairly high minimum balance/investment requirements as I was about to start running down my UK investments in Barclays Wealth and just leave the UK account in place for UK pension collection purposes.