HBG

I had to contact my English bank, Abbey, this morning on a security matter, and asked whether it was possible to operate the English account from my Spanish address. To my surprise, they said that I could and gave me an address in the UK to make the changeover.

Even though Abbey is now part of Santander, I always felt safer leaving the account in England, and when I last enquired they said I couldn’t operate it from a Spanish address anyway.

Now that I can, would it make sense to change over to Santander completely as I would possibly save on ATM charges? I already have an account in Spain with another bank, for minor every-day transactions.

Chiclanagir

This is interesting. I need another UK bank although I am living in Spain.

valenciatim

You may struggle to actually open a new account in the UK without proof of address, which will need to be a recent utility bill or council tax bill.
The only Bank that I could find to open an account on my return was Lloyds-TSB who opened an account (albeit a very basic one),with just a passport.

Mitzyboy

I have two UK bank accounts, one of which I re registered to a Spanish address, and the other knows I am here

I registered for online statements though!

Mykap

My UK account with HSBC accepts my Spanish box number address and for a small fee (15GBP per month I think) waives all ATM charges anywhere in the world - in my line of work that pays for itself easily.

Chiclanagir

Don´t talk to me about Lloyds - they are the problem why I need another bank.

Aussie30

Hi, Abbey and Santander are merging but it hasn't properly happened yet and they are still very separate. Santander has very high fees and charges so I would probably stick with Abbey for now if you are happy with them. We opened an account over here with Barclays and they've been OK so far, apart from not giving us a card to use, we have to do everything in the branch!

valenciatim

I can imagine! But they were the only bank that I could open a new account with without having to provide a utility bill less than 3 months old with my UK address on it!

snikpoh

That's very interesting. I have an account with Alliance & Leicester (also part of Santander) and they still won't 'allow' me to live in Spain. I have had to give a UK address in order to keep the account live. My main reason for this is to continue to pay my endowment premiums. To pay these from Spain from a euro account would propably cost be twice what it costs at the moment!

Of course, once the endowments mature, then I will close this account.

cricketman

If you have a "nomina" i.e. a regular income into your account then Santander has 0% comission. No monthly fees or fees at atms or transfers. It will tell you what you need on their website. Otherwise yes they charge for everything

THORTENERIFE

If you open a EURO account in an english bank ,then you can by law only be charged a small fee when you take money out in spain from that account

mikelincs

We had accounts with the HSBC and Halifax, in the UK, kept both, and they were happy to send statements to Spain, and for us to operate the accounts from there. HSBC better than Halifax as the procedure to change addresses is very complicated with the Halifax, but with HSBC can be simply done on line.

HBG

Now that I’m able to operate my English account from Spain, I’m quite happy with my banking arrangements. I’m charged something like 3.9 Euros to draw out 300 Euros from an ATM here in Spain, sounds a lot, but it’s only 1.3 percent.

I suppose I could save that amount by transferring the entire account to Spain, it has a regular amount paid in, so there wouldn’t be many charges on top, if any at all.

But I’m hesitating to do that. I’ve lived in Spain for many years and have no plans to return to the UK, but who knows what the future holds? And from what I’ve read on this forum and elsewhere it’s not easy to set up a new bank account in the UK nowadays. (I remember a big win on the dogs years ago and opening a building society account to hide it from the wife. I’m sure I used the name D. Duck). (I’ve just remembered the name of the dog, it was Super Mingo, a white dog that won the last race at Clapton from the Six trap, it must have been on something because it flew round the track).

What would make me go back to the UK? An earthquake might, we live in a high risk area and get regular tremors. And if the pound goes to something like 80P to the Euro. And . . .

Chiclanagir

The Co-operative Bank bank based in Guersey operate for ex-pats and you can also pay into it at Post Offices in the UK.