Keeping savings in UK when emigrating

effalump

Hi there,

We are going to be emigrating to the Netherlands in just over 3 weeks, and I was hoping for some advice. We have (provisionally) sold our house for £235000 pounds, but we will be renting at first when we get to the Netherlands. We wish to keep the money in the lowest risk manner possible, so we wanted to put it in a savings account with the highest rate of interest possible. We plan to use it to buy a house probably in about a year's time (but could be sooner or later), when we are more familiar with the area we intend to live.
I had thought that the answer would be simple enough; i.e., we would just open UK savings accounts with the highest interest possible (because UK interest rates are considerably higher than those on the Continent). However, all of the accounts I have looked at appear to require you to be a UK resident. So:

1. Can anyone suggest a UK account paying decent interest that does not have a residency requirement?
2. Does anyone know if banks are likely to 'waive' the residency requirement (especially if, e.g., I could arrange a UK address for mailing).
3. Can anyone suggest other minimal-risk ways of saving such a sum for approximately one year (preferably with 'instant access' in case we decided to buy after 6 months)?
4. Do you think I'd be better off talking to an accountant or an IFA about this (hope Martin didn't hear that...)?
5. Has anyone have similar experiences that they would like to share?

Thanks in advance for any advice you can provide. Kind regards,

Andy

seven-day-weekend

We live in Spain and apart from a Spanish current account, all our others are in the UK. Most of the banks have no problem with posting statements etc to our Spanish address. The one that did require us to have a UK address, we still use our old address, as we still have the house and our son lives in it.

We already had most of these accounts before we moved.

However, I have recently opened a high-interest savings account with one of the banks I already had a current account with, no problem whatsoever. That was with the Co-Op Bank.

Hope this helps.

One thing.....if you have an ISA, you can keep it open and get interest added to it, but can't make any deposits to it while you are abroad.

EdInvestor

effalump wrote:

I had thought that the answer would be simple enough; i.e., we would just open UK savings accounts with the highest interest possible (because UK interest rates are considerably higher than those on the Continent).

Basically you're right, it is that simple

However, all of the accounts I have looked at appear to require you to be a UK resident.

But only when you open the account.If you subsequently move abroad, they don't mind. So open all the accounts you think you might want before you go and you should be fine.

grumbler

Just a note.
If you move abroad and stop being a UK resident, you must declare the interest you earn in UK in your new country of residence for tax purposes. Similarly you can (should) register all your UK accounts to receive interest gross (submit R85 forms).

Cook_County

There are several issues here:
1. Holding the money offshore will almost certainly save UK tax.
2. You will remain subject to UK IHT on worldwide assets unless you never expect to return to the UK again (and settle permanently in the Netherlands). Keeping funds in Sterling implies you remain domiciled within the UK.
3. The question here is largely one of currency risk if you keep money in a foreign currency such as Sterling as against Euros if you will be buying in that currency.
4. As Grumbler says you may want to choose investments on the basis of what is most tax-efficient in the Netherlands, as against what is easily available in the UK.
5. I'd suggest you read some of the discussions at http://www.expatica.com/. I think it is one of the best sites about!

effalump

Just a quick thanks to everyone who replied. I have confirmed that I can keep my current savings account (first direct), and will use that until we have figured out tax efficiency issues in the Netherlands. Thanks for the pointer to expatica - I had come across the site several times, and it does seem very useful. Thanks again to all,

Andy

EdInvestor

We wish to keep the money in the lowest risk manner possible, so we wanted to put it in a savings account with the highest rate of interest possible.

Highest rate doesn't always suggest lowest risk of course

I would suggest that 235k is too much to put with one account and that you consider at least two and preferably three.

Venerable institutions can still keel over even in the best regulated countries, of which the UK is only recently one ( remember Equitable Life?)

effalump

Good point - we had already planned this actually. We planned to split it between 4 accounts, 2 in each of our names with each of 2 institutions. Although we would have about £110000 between us in each institution
(the remainder being used to give us some working capital when we move), we would at least have 63400 covered by the FSCS between us in the event of either institution collapsing. We may even consider going for a third account each to reduce the liability further, but given that we are probably only going to be in this position for a year or so, we may just take the risk. Anyway, thanks for the advice.

Doppleganger

Effalump, thanks for asking those question I'm moving to Sweden in October and had been wondering the same thing.