GCM

In the recent (and on-going) financial crisis I was tempted to open some more UK bank accounts but I kept coming across the fact that you had to be a UK resident.

But I still have kept my UK bank accounts open since I made the move to Spain.

Am I doing something wrong in this?

I'm a UK resident and surely the banks want my money?

lic

You say you are a UK resident, if this is so, then ether should be no problem.
Presumably you have a UK address and the bank sends its statements, cards and cheque books to it.
If you do have an address in the UK, then I don't see why you cannot open a bank account over the internet, and when the paperwork arrives at your UK address, it can be forwarded to you in Spain, and you return it to your UK address, for them to send on in another envelope with an English stamp on.

Hillybilly

If you are a UK resident as you say in the last line of your post, then you shouldn't be having any problems opening new accounts.
If you've moved to Spain and no longer have a UK address then you are not a UK resident and, although it seems to be OK to keep existing bank accounts with the bank acknowledging your new Spanish address and sending mail to it, it isn't possible to open any regular new UK accounts. Which are you?!

GCM

Sorry - I meant to say I am a UK citizen (not UK resident).

snikpoh

What does that really mean? Do you mean that you were born in UK - in which case, so what?

The real issues are where are you living now and where do you pay tax.

There's really no point in holding UK accounts other than to pay UK bills. If you are suggesting that you need to hold more than one account to bring yourself under the guaranteed threshold, then I would ask why is the money in UK if you are living in Spain? The thresholds are higher here anyway.

If you really are UK resident (ie. you live there), then opening an account in Uk is not a problem.

Fred James

I which case you will not be able to open a UK bank account although they are quite happy to let you continue with an existing account.

The normal procedure for opening a UK account is that you have to have an address in the UK and provide proof that it is your address - they usually want recent utility bills for that address in your name.

They are not deliberately being obstructive - it's the anti money laundering regulations.

Beachcomber

I have bank accounts both on shore and in the Channel Islands which I already had before I moved from the UK but I regularly open new accounts when the interest rates goes down in one account and goes up in another.

They know I live in Spain as they send my mail here. There has never been any query about this. I have a house in the UK which I have never lived in but where I pay utility bills, TV licence, community charge etc. in my name but I have never had to produce these.

Under Spanish law it used to be illegal for residents (Spanish or foreign) to hold a bank account outside of Spain. I'm not sure if this is still the case as Spain now receives interest from my UK savings under the European Savings Directive a situation I am looking to rectify by opening an account in a country outside of the auspices of the ESD especially before the withholding tax increases from 20% to 35% in 2010. Now is not the time, though!

I would never entrust all of my assets to Spanish financial institution for just the same reason that I would never sell my UK property. It may be a member of a first world community but its political system, infrastructure, services and cavalier attitude towards European foreigners is still undeniably third world.

scampicat

We are Spanish resident and have UK bank accounts which we had before we came here. We have been able to open new accounts with the SAME banks but not with others. All but one of the financial institutions (a Building Society as it happens) were quite happy to register our Spanish address. The one that objected we kept registered to our UK address.

We do have a Spanish Bank Account, it only ever has a maximum of two-three months of my husband's teachers' Pension in it - this is what we live on and we transfer it across from the UK as necessary. All the rest of our money is in the UK and we also still have a house there.

Reason? There are two. One (the most important one) is that we want to maintain links with the UK as we will be resident there again in the not too distant future.

The other reason is more or less the same as Beachcomber's.(quote) 'It may be a member of a first world community but its political system, infrastructure, services and cavalier attitude towards European foreigners is still undeniably third world'. (Although the Healthcare provision is excellent).

I am not a taxpayer in either country and my husband's Teachers' Pension has to be taxed in the UK.

snikpoh

Ah but you are, surely. You may pay zero tax, but you are still, legally, a taxpayer. That is, be resident here for more than 183 days/year etc. etc. ...

steviedeluxe

A bit surprised by this. You think the AVE system, big city metro systems, national bus services in Spain are third world compared to the UK (the infrastructure bit you mention)? I realise views differ, but I would be tempted to look at this in completely the opposite way.
As for keeping your money in a British bank account - well, fair enough, if it hasn't already been bought out by Santander it will probably be a bank that gets nationalised anyway. I think this relieves people of a lot of stress regarding their hard-earnt savings. I shudder to think what I would feel like if I had put my savings in the Icelandic banks. On the other hand, worth bearing in mind that in the UK Alistair Darling has now committed himself to spending his way out of the recession. All very well, but this normally means a future increase in inflation and/or a further devaluation of the pound. Watch this space.....

scampicat

I mean I don't have to pay any.

scampicat

I don't know what the infrastructure is like in big cities - I live in the sticks - but actually I stand corrected, the infrastructure here is OK too - but as for the corruption, bureaucracy, wheeling and dealing, the complete disregard for employment legislation and other similar things it is very anarchic. Some people consider that is part of its charm but I still don't want any of my savings here. Mainly because our bank here doesn't pay any interest (you get a mouse mat or a set of saucepans!) whereas one of my accounts in the UK is still paying 8% (until January, when it matures).

Have I got it wrong or don't world leaders think the Brown/Darling model of dealing with the financial crisis to be one of the best?



AFAIK none of the banks I have money have been bought by Santander and I'm glad to say I have none in Iceland.

Hillybilly

That's just public transportation. Which within and between big cities is great, anywhere else not so.
However, infrastructure is not just public transportation. It's also telecommunications (monopoly-run and expensive or non existent in many places), sewage treatment (non-existent in many places), mains power supplies (ditto and unreliable elsewhere), mains drinking quality water (ditto) etc etc. Off-topic, sorry but I agree with Beachcomber on this one.

steviedeluxe

Perhaps you should have moved to Madrid (where the drinking water is far superior to that of London) I take your point about the countryside though. Even in Britain there are villages in say Wales and Scotland where you can't receive television channels or get internet access. Spain (because of its geographical structure) has far more isolated villages and regions etc. Part of its charm and appeal - at least to many. I'm more of a city wimp - you wouldn't get me moving to the Hebrides either - even though I admit the view of a mountain range when you get up must be worth a large element of the pain.

bigglesworth

Good news - sold house, as I have said.
Bad news - house value is now cash and sitting in UK banks. Which concentrates the mind wonderfully on the viability or not of banks.

The 'Brown Darling model' is not quite as universally admired as the BBC would have you believe. .

The model was widely discussed before adoption by the UK (indeed was proposed by a couple of obscure backbenchers a month or so ago).
The original plan drawn up by Treasury officials involved HMG providing necessary capital by taking stakes in failing banks in return for preference shares, and accepting a greater range of assets as collateral to create extra liquidity. Cutting interest rates was too dangerous and not part of the plan.

Mr Brown changed the terms -very significantly. The Government is no longer taking preference shares, but ordinary shares. They also require a 12 percent return. He has banned dividend payments to shareholders and capped payments to employees.
The effects of those three are, in reverse order.
One, our pension funds take 25 percent of their dividend income from bank shares. So if you have any pension left after Mr Browns tax raids, adjust your expectations still further down.

Two, if UK banks must return 12 percent on loan amounts to the government, compared to 5 percent elsewhere, how can they compete in international markets? (Of course, given that their ability to recruit top talent will be severely restricted by the cap on pay, that is unlikely to matter). They will have no alternative but to drastically increase charges to UK account holders and will as a result be more likely to collapse anyway.

Three, if the banks do go under, then, as ordinary shareholders, the Government (i.e. the taxpayers money) will not be at the head but at the back of a large queue.

And in addition they cut interest rates. So anyone who is looking for falls in commodity prices to offset inflation has to reckon with the likelihood that sterling will collapse still further, on top of the 20 percent fall against the dollar over the summer, and the continual slide on trade-weighted over the past 5 or 6 years.

The elephant in the room is that it is keeping interest rates in both the US and the UK in order to prolong a boom that created this disaster. There is universal agreement that the debt culture (which infected governments too) was fostered by low interest rates.

And the reason we had to rescue the banks was they were too big too fail. So how exactly does merging the large banks and cutting interest rates do anything to help?

IMHO it is only possible to fix a problem when you identify the failed elements. Until Governments accept the very real, indeed central, part they played in this sorry affair, there is little chance they can fix it. That means acknowledging that it was a failure of fiscal policy that caused this. The most dangerous aspect is that if this gathering of the great and the good in November goes ahead, Gordon will arrive posing as an elder statesman. The navigator on the Titanic becomes the admiral of the fleet.

So be afraid. Be very afraid. Because there is only one way Gordon's master plan can work - by letting inflation rip. And abandoning sterling.