Saving: USD from a risky territory...

Gibblet

Hey everyone!

I'm in Iraq and I want to save my earnings in a safe banking system (at least in comparison to one that can get raided by ISIS) that offers protection and access should I need it.

I earn a reasonable income but, I earn a wage in USD. If I transfer this to my NatWest account it will be converted to GBP and I will lose on transfer feed, a fee on currency change and a bad conversion rate. The same is true for my Euro account.

I've been desperately looking for alternatives that I can use while living abroad. No international banks here operate except for those who are lucky enough to have 50k to dump in straight away.

Is there anything you can recommend? Neither bank will allow me to send and save in dollars and I want this currently good wage to be my bedrock for the future now that all my debts are cleared.

PenguinJim

I use UKForex for my international bank transfers to send USD to a GBP bank account in the UK. Much better rates than banks, faster (roughly 28 hours each time for me; I've used them three times), and no extra fee on US$5,000+.

Gibblet

Great idea but since I'm not currently resident, it's impossible for me to apply and many of these organisations have Iraq blacklisted.

Also using an Iraqi bank card online is all but impossible. The transfers I make will have to be direct Bank to Bank.

Keeping money in cash just isn't safe here.

bowlhead99

Your problem of 'not being currently resident' is going to really get in your way. As this is a UK-centric forum, most standard places people recommend would probably be UK based and off limits to you, either because they only want UK residents or they specifically don't want Iraq residents. As you probably noticed, most places that are not in Iraq will not want to deal with residents of Iraq.

Your profile says your location was (at some point?) Gibraltar. Can you not open an account with any of the banks that have a presence there? For example, I have a dollar account with Lloyds International and they're happy to have people that aren't UK resident http://international.lloydsbank.com/international-current-account/

Actually mine is in Isle of Man but their International account is opened up in IoM or Gib depending on where in the world you actually live.

No idea if they actually want Iraqi residents to have accounts with them, perhaps not. But basically the 'international' or 'offshore' banks are more likely to take non-UK residents as customers for USD or GBP accounts.

I also have USD with Citi in UK or US. But I was UK or US resident respectively when opening those accounts. Probably less easy when you're resident in a country that doesn't even place inside the 170 least corrupt countries (Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index has Iraq at 171 vs UK 14, last year).
http://www.citibank.co.uk/personal/banking/international/

Why not ask someone in the same position as you, e.g. an expat colleague? Do they all just send their wages back to their originating country's bank and convert to their 'home' currency?

PenguinJim

Gibblet wrote: »

Great idea but since I'm not currently resident, it's impossible for me to apply and many of these organisations have Iraq blacklisted.

I didn't need to be resident in my foreign country (and I'm not a resident in the UK), but I did need a utility bill in my name (less than three months old) and EITHER a scan of my passport or a scan of my driver's license. They verified my address in the foreign country by sending a card with a code, and also gave me a call on my mobile to check me out.

The transfer was made from my bank account in my foreign country (I could have done it in the branch, but I used telephone banking the first two times and Internet banking most recently), transferring to their bank, which would then transfer to the UK bank. The first transfer also had them call me to confirm before they accepted the order.

So if you've got a local address, telephone number and a utility bill in your name (I assume you have a passport), you should be good to go.

They've got Iraq blacklisted as a country they won't send money to, but you're sending from.

You'll still be converting into £, though, but no transfer fee and a much, much, much better exchange rate than just bank-to-bank. And the £ seems quite cheap to me at the moment. (Compared with six months ago, anyway)

(I've got a thread about UKForex in the Referrals section somewhere here, which gave some £ conversion comparisons between UKForex, currency exchangers and banks - if you sign up through my affiliate link there and make a transfer, we'll both get a £50 Amazon voucher, which is nice)

Upwind

If it helps Gibblet, you can send it to my bank account....

Gibblet

Thanks guys

Did you have to deposit some absurd amount before they would open it for you? HSBC and Citibank are here but they require a $50,000 initial deposit...

bowlhead99

I think I opened up my UK Citi dollar savings account and later a dollar current account with something like $2k, it was years ago now. These were domestic UK accounts (London, cheques cleared through New York) marketed to normal UK residents, rather than an international account offshore.

Most banks running offshore banking or expat programmes want to make a certain level of likely income from you by selling other services as they assume that someone who wants to keep their cash outside the UK for tax or travel reasons generally has enough in the way of assets or income for tax and domicile and international access to be things of value for them. So, some of them will have a threshold level below which they won't deal with you. So I can imagine HSBC Premier International or Citi Offshore or Citi Baghdad or whatever will have a different requirement for initial or ongoing deposit than Citi London.

FWIW the Lloyds Premier International link I sent has an income requirement of GBP 50k or GBP 25k to deposit within 3 months of opening the account. So I guess that's about $80k income which might be acheivable for you even if $40k to deposit in the first quarter isn't realistic.

Once the account's open you don't need to keep that much in there. Never had more than about $5k in mine. Of course, whether they want someone from Iraq as their customer is a different question.