How do offshore accounts work ?

TzarJay

I currently have an account with Barclays and I'm planning on travelling to Europe quite often as my Dad lives Spain. I was looking into opening a Barclays Wealth International Current Account, as they offer multiple currency's and currency cards, but how safe and reliable are offshore accounts ?

I heard UK based accounts are protected with £80K insurance of something like that, but I'm unsure if offshore accounts come with this.

Also do you have to do self assement taxes if you have offshore savings ? I havn't a clue about self assesment if so.

Thanks.

RetiredInThailand

You should check the total cost before opening any of these fancy accounts. There are often monthly charges, plus some sort of minimum balance, maybe with no or little interest, and there will be exchange rate weighting when you actually change from one currency to another.

The offshore deposit protection in the CI and IOM exists but it is 50K instead of 85K, and it is not from the UK government and so might be less likely to pay out. Some of the UK banks guarantee their offshore subsidiaries, but not all.

You would have to declare any interest received yourself and the information would be forwarded to HMRC anyway, so they might even flag you as being worth closer inspection.

From what you say you might be better off just getting a card from Metrobank that you can use abroad with no exchange rate weighting, and couple this with a standard onshore GBP instant access account paying 3+%. Transfer money as needed from one to the other via online banking.

All this would be free, except perhaps for any cashpoint withdrawal charge abroad.