Bankers Are Wankers! - Opening An Account

If you are not fortunate enough to come to the UK via an intra-office transfer where most of your banking needs would have been sorted for you, you unfortunately will have to navigate the frustrating and tedious waters of opening a banking account here.  Now the reasons for this being so difficult is that:

1) credit does not transfer internationally
2) terrorism laws
3) Piss poor admin at UK banks (more on that later)

Now the fact that your credit score does not transfer to the UK could be really great if your US credit score was the same as your shoe size.  Or really bad if you had immaculate credit.  Either way, you will have to start over fresh here and that means having NO credit.  Therefore the banks will be a bit leary about having you open an account and will make you jump through hoops accordingly. There is also the anti-terror laws that have pretty strict residency requirements.  So you will inevitably have to prove your identity several times and you also need to prove that you have a job.  Trying to open an account by depositing a large of amount of cash without any job willl be frowned upon.


The four major banks here are: Barclays, NatWest, HSBC and Lloyds TSB.  Their requirements differ slightly for each account but at the very minimum you need to provide:

 - Your passport w/ visa
 - Proof of your UK address. (ie a utility bill)
 - Your official letter of acceptance for a new position or a pay stub for any current position that you have

Now this all seems simple right?  So what's with the title, Bankers Are Wankers?  Well firstly, its amusing, at least to me. And I could get into the fact that everyone masturbates, so it's really not that inaccurate either.  But I'll save THAT discussion for another day.  The real reason why Banks are Wanks is that their administration is rubbish.  Even if you have all of the paperwork I've listed above and then some,  they will inevitably still take their sweet time to open an account.

The worst offender seems to be NatWest.  I have spoken to a few people and they all tell the same story.  They walked into the branch.  They filled out all of the paperwork and provide appropraite documentation.  They were promised their debit cards in a week's time.  But their debit cards never came.  Instead they had to return to the bank several times to fill out the same forms and submit the same paperwork because it as misplaced or incorrect or .  I spoke to one friend who went through this merry-go-round for SIX MONTHS and in the end he just gave up and went to Barclay's where they managed to open his account in 5 days.  So in short, go to Barclay's or Lloyds TSB as they seem to not have these administrative issues.

But if you know in advance that you'll be coming to the UK, HSBC has this amazing Passport account that will allow you to open your account before you've even stepped foot in the UK.  The requirements are similar to the one above, you just have to show proof of your overseas address as well as prove that you'll be in the UK for more than a year.  The proof of staying past one year seems to trip up some people because if you can't prove that then they'll decline your application.  Don't fret.  If this happens, just open an account with Lloyds TSB or Barclays when you arrive.

Some other things to keep in mind...

Barclays has an agreement with Bank of America.  So you can use your BofA debit card at a Barclays ATM without incurring any charges.  The same goes for if you are using your Barclays card at a BofA ATM.

If you have a US HSBC account, you can not convert that into a UK account.  Apparently they are two completely different entities.  So while it may be nice to try and open an account in the US to use in the UK, it doesn't quite work that way.  I know because I tried!