British Ex-Pat Bank Accounts to be CLOSED

British Ex-Pat Bank Accounts to be CLOSED

11:40 AM, 16th October 2020, About 4 years ago 59

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Hundreds of thousands of British Ex-Pats living in the EU will have received a shock letter in the last few days.

Customers of Nat-West, Coutts, RBS, Barclays, Bank of Scotland and Halifax are among the list of those affected. Their bank accounts will be closed by the end of this year, in some case much earlier. Cheques and credit/debit cards will be cancelled, payments into the accounts will be returned “account closed” and Direct Debits and all other payment requests will be treated in the same way. Customers of these Banks will receive a cheque for any money in their accounts, and it’s their problem what to do next.

Many of the affected Ex-Pats are retired and are now left wondering how they will receive their pension income.

Ex-Pat landlords are left wondering what they are to do too. Will their tenants pay the International Bank Transfer fees to pay their rent into an offshore bank account? Will landlords be able to set up Direct Debits from an overseas bank account to make their mortgage payments?

Are you affected by this? If so, please share your thoughts below and solutions you have looked into.


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Comments

CazT

8:57 AM, 20th October 2020, About 4 years ago

Reply to the comment left by Mark Alexander at 20/10/2020 - 08:47
You have no idea how much I was looking forward to hearing this Mark! Even though I am scaling down it’s great to know that my agent of many years is still as proactive as ever.

Beaver

9:37 AM, 20th October 2020, About 4 years ago

Reply to the comment left by CazT at 20/10/2020 - 07:40
That's interesting. Out of interest, how easy is the website integration if you are putting it into a php-based website? Is it as easy as Stripe?

Chris Sheldon

10:19 AM, 20th October 2020, About 4 years ago

We are working on this at the moment, should all go well and we meet all relevant regulation we will be able to provide landlords with a UK bank account and sort code (also debit card if required) which will be enable landlords to transfer funds either automatically or manually to any account as is required. In addition to this the service will also produce tax statements monitor yield and profit and loss for each individual property. The service will also be more secure from a landlords perspective as the funds will be paid directly to the landlords account which reduces processing time. As mark said we are in alpha testing at the moment and hoping to commence beta testing early 2021.

Christopher Farrell

10:26 AM, 20th October 2020, About 4 years ago

Reply to the comment left by Chris Sheldon at 20/10/2020 - 10:19
Great news. I look forward to his being available.

Beaver

10:27 AM, 20th October 2020, About 4 years ago

Reply to the comment left by Chris Sheldon at 20/10/2020 - 10:19
If that's a reply to my comment about how easy is the integration then with respect to P&L etc. for my BTL property I use excel. For the rest of my business I use xero. Quickbooks is also popular. So a feed from the bank account into either system would be useful.

Chris Sheldon

10:30 AM, 20th October 2020, About 4 years ago

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 20/10/2020 - 10:27The system uses open banking so it can integrate with most accounting software, however it does already produce the data within the system should someone not wish to use external accounting software.

Beaver

10:38 AM, 20th October 2020, About 4 years ago

Reply to the comment left by Chris Sheldon at 20/10/2020 - 10:30
That might be useful if it is already set up to provide a tax return in the format that HMRC requires for property; I already have my excel spreadsheet set up that way.

Bristol Landlord

3:45 AM, 21st October 2020, About 4 years ago

Reply to the comment left by Mark Alexander at 19/10/2020 - 21:12
This week I called Lloyds Bank, with whom I have had an account for decades, and they confirmed they will be closing accounts of ex pats with addresses in Portugal, Germany, Holland, Slovakia, Ireland and Italy.
I then called HSBC who confirmed they would not be closing anyone’s account wherever they lived. They also said I could open an account online with whatever European address I had, just send them proof of ID and address.
So I think the course of action is clear.

Beaver

11:05 AM, 21st October 2020, About 4 years ago

Reply to the comment left by Bristol Landlord at 21/10/2020 - 03:45
I think you're right. I actually bank with Barclays, but I'm not an expat (yet :-)) so I don't know what Barclays are doing. HSBC always was the Honk Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation so you'd probably expect them to take more of an international view; bit disappointing if the other UK banks don't if we're expecting to "...prosper mightily..." outside the EU.

This has been an interesting thread. I've used both Paypal and Stripe in other business ventures. I tried an online Barclays system once but the website integration was difficult whereas both Paypal and Stripe were both easy to set up and integrate into a web platform. I knew nothing about Transferwise beforehand but I've taken a look as a consequence of reading this thread as it looks interesting; Transferwise looks to be based in the UK as far as I can see.

I think whatever happens as we exit the EU (without a deal on the cards) then the UK government will have to ensure that the UK remains an attractive place to book revenues whether these are rents, interest payments, or something else. If it doesn't then tax revenues will plummet even further than they have done as a result of the response to Covid-19.

M&SFAN

10:40 AM, 10th November 2020, About 3 years ago

Reply to the comment left by CazT at 19/10/2020 - 10:38
Thanks for the info about Transferwise. I am not an expat but I will look into it as I have wanted a dual currency account for quite a while now and it seems so darn hard to find one.

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