ChrisBennett

Hi Guys

I am moving with my Company Avaya to the US , my family and I are moving out permanently from May 2015, but in the meantime I will be going back and forth. The question I have is that from October 1st I will be on the US payroll and need a US bank account for it to be paid into. As I wont have a perminant address until early 2015, can I open a US bank account with my UK address?

This is the only thing worrying me about the move....

Vimto

Why not use the company mailing address?
You can always 'move' to your permanent home address later and have the bank mail statements and other junk mail there.

Pulaski

That's pretty nice if that is the "only" thing worrying you. ..... In theory you don't need a US address, though small banks might have a policy against accepting "foreign" accounts. The problem is that you don't only need an address, you need evidence tying you to that address, typically a utility bill is asked for, and you're not going to have that.

If you can use your office address then you'll need some mail sent to you at that address to show the bank before the bank will open the account. I have heard that even a postcard sent by you to yourself franked and delivered by the US Postal Service will suffice.

If you can't use your office address, get a mail box at The UPS Store as they use a "street address", and give the address as "Apt No." or "Unit No." .... and use a UPS Store location across town, not right around the corner from the bank!

ChrisBennett

Thanks that's a great idea re the UPS mail box... However HSBC seem to run a scheme where you can open a USA bank account whilst still being in the UK. I am going to see them next week, anyone else done this????

MMcD

Maybe others can weigh in...but I've found HSBC in LA to be worse than awful.
Decidedly unhelpful with a ton of attitude.
Be warned
As bad as I've found Wells Fargo generally - HSBC is worse on every score

ps. What about CitiBank? They're in both UK and States - with branches all over LA. If you want to open the account before you get here - have a word with them.

Sally Redux

Make sure Citibank do it right. The 'specialist' in London gave us a dollar account - in the UK. We therefore couldn't access our money when we got here.

AdobePinon

Also, I don't believe that HSBC has branches anywhere near Denver, if that is important to you.

Pulaski

By all accounts, HSBC is awful, has virtually no branch network outside of New York (even within NY they sold off many, a couple of hundred, of their branches), and is expensive to boot. I don't recall anyone saying anything hugely positive about them, except that, assuming they don't pï$$ you off entirely, some aspects if their service are convenient.

We have a couple of BE members who have had a bad experience with Wells Fargo, however othey have by far the best reputation of the big banks, so much so that a CNN article this past week exempted Wells Fargo from the general thrust of the article that the big banks had a poor public reputation.

I bank with Wells Fargo and have no qualms about recommending them, I have found their service to be excellent, and they bent over backwards when I needed a mortgage two years ago under slightly unusual circumstances. I have banked with them, or Wachovia (a bank they took over in 2008), since 2003.

RICH

It might be possible to open a us account, if you appear in person. If you are thinking of doing it remotely, I doubt it.

4/5 years ago my dad went into bank of america while visiting me, and got an account using my address. When he got home he got online and changed address to UK and went paperless. Still open, but he does not use it AFAIK.

jonasaurus

Chris,
I'm heading out to the US (NYC) in the next couple months and with regards to bank account have gone down the path of opening a HSBC dollar account in the US for receiving US salary. Its relatively painless application process, in light of the requirements to open a US account while you are there and having evidence thought this would be the quickest. Can always open another account once you are established there and get payroll to switch your US pay to the new account later.

Cheers
Jon

ChrisBennett

Thanks Jon, Can you transfer to the UK as my family will still be here in the UK till May and need to pay the mortgage and bills etc??

RICH

If you did this without being in US, please share what was required.

jonasaurus

Are you an existing HSBC customer? Not sure if it would be more involved as a process if you were not. Some of the application questions ask about the expected inflow and outflow (to which country) of money from this US HSBC account you are wishing to set up. The short answer is yes that you can transfer to and from the UK

Need to complete an initial on the phone application (or in branch with an appointment I believe although I followed the former rather than later), application is encrypted and sent to you via email which you can then verify / amend details and print out. Collate the required evidence (e.g. proof of address and identity) and go into the HSBC branch to have your completed application submitted. If US HSBC require addition information they will then contact you.

kodokan

We did this too, opening a US HSBC account whilst we were still resident in Switzerland, prior to moving over. They were perfectly happy to do this, mailing everything to our Swiss address, and including a high limit credit card before we even moved there. We were doing it under Premier status, which might have helped, but I know it's perfectly possible with their regular account too - we asked, as we weren't sure whether we wanted to hold the required cash balance with them for Premier status or not.

They would only open a single, not a joint account (although we could have added me once we moved here if we liked) and I vaguely think hubby might have had to provide something from his company evidencing the move, or had to go to the HSBC in Geneva (our nearest branch) to sign things and provide proof of ID.

We also opened a HSBC Expat multi-currency account, as it's only possible in the US to get accounts denominated in dollars, and we wanted USD/ GBP/ CHF, to mop up things in our previous countries. This was trickier - in general, they're not inclined to let US persons (tax residents) open these, but eventually conceded that as long as we weren't citizens or had green cards (we didn't at the time), they could consider us 'temporary expats' and we could have one.

HSBC are great for this initial cross-border stuff, but once here, just open an account with a 'normal' US bank, for on-the-spot convenience for cashiers' checks and so on (you'll need these for things like renting an apartment and buying a car, and it's a complete pain getting HSBC to mail them out). We didn't have a permanent US address and were in a holiday villa at the time, but it wasn't a problem - we either used hubby's work, or had the cards and paperwork mailed to the branch itself and collected in person, I can't remember which now.

Your 2014 and 2015 taxes are going to be... um... challenging- have you got help with this?