Advice for First Direct account

magicgenie

I (British born and British passport holder) have a healthy number of accounts with First Direct, i've had them for many years.
I'm working out of the UK temporarily, have been for some time.
All of a sudden, I've had a message from the bank saying.
'We realise you're not resident in the UK, please contact us'.

So, i wondered if you can help me with some answers for anybody banking with them or familiar with the bank.

1. Has anybody received a message like this?
2. Do you know if First Direct bank is only for people on British soil 365 days a year?
3. If it's not 365 days, is it some other figure?

Would hate to:
1. Be in trouble with the bank.
2. To have to close my accounts.

Any help much appreciated.

best regards

grumbler

I am pretty sure that you have to spend more than half of a (financial?) year abroad to stop being a UK resident.

xylophone

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/international/residence.htm might assist?

henm2

You should have no problem overall.

If you were out of the UK for a year or more FD might class you as a non Uk resident. The country you are resident of might classed as a high risk country for AML purposes and this means FD will ask you lots of questions regarding your employment there and assets and transactions you may have connected with that country. There are aprox 180 countries HSBC group class as high risk.

However if your connections are just regular and non suspicious and as you are a longstanding FD account holder you should have no problems and your accounts will continue as normal with no further hassle.

Vortigern

One thing to consider is that you can't pay in to an ISA, while you're not UK resident for tax purposes. You can keep any existing ISA and still receive interest free of UK tax.

eskbanker

OP - from a quick nose around your post history (sorry, just curious!) you were working in Dubai in 2006 and posted various references to being based abroad in the years since then, have you been working there full time since 2006? If so, I could see why FD (or other institutions) might not share your view that this is temporary, although ultimately it's up to them as to what they wish to do about this, so when you contact them they should be able to clarify whether they wish to act on this or not....

baby_frogmella

eskbanker wrote: »

OP - from a quick nose around your post history (sorry, just curious!) you were working in Dubai in 2006 and posted various references to being based abroad in the years since then, have you been working there full time since 2006? If so, I could see why FD (or other institutions) might not share your view that this is temporary, although ultimately it's up to them as to what they wish to do about this, so when you contact them they should be able to clarify whether they wish to act on this or not....

In my case FD accepted my UAE address without any issues when i told them i moved overseas...this was back in 1998 though. They even sent cheque books, debit & credit cards to my Dubai address! (via courier of course). Perhaps having my salary in UAE paid into my FD account helped.