Halifax closing saving accounts

Zilversmid

try it during this covid 19 period, including  a two week isolation period. international banking is not at fault. Only the prehistoric UK banking system.

xylophone

Halifax should be able to arrange payment by transfer somehow, and if you had a cheque payable to yourself in your hand you'd be able to find a way to get a bank in The Netherlands to let you pay it in, 

Not sure about that...... http://7002zin.com/fjn/services.com/wpg/country3248.html?alpha2=NL

The Dutch banking system is characterized by efficient central clearing systems and an electronic payments system with universal coverage. Due to recent massive consolidation it is dominated by a small number of extremely large banks; ABN-AMRO and ING are the leading players. These megalithic banks have absorbed almost all of their competition and most of the former private banks.

Cheque payments are heavily discouraged and becoming unfamiliar to Dutch customers. Cheque clearing has become a manual process and is regarded as a stone age throwback by Dutch bankers. 

https://www.abnamro.nl/nl/en/commercialbanking/products/payments/bankcheques/phasing-out-cheques.html

From 1 January 2020 ABN AMRO will stop the processing of cheques in the Netherlands.

https://wiki.treasurers.org/wiki/Netherlands

• Cheques – Cheques are no longer used in the Netherlands.

Thrugelmir

Zilversmid said:

try it during this covid 19 period, including  a two week isolation period. international banking is not at fault. Only the prehistoric UK banking system.

How did you end up only having savings accounts left? 

wmb194

Could the cheque be made out to 'NS&I' and then you could use it to open an account with it? Obviously check your eligibility but I understand that it is usually friendly towards expats.

colsten

NS&I also take cheques payable to the account holder.

lhsecons

dahj said:

Can you not get a cheap flight back to the UK and open another current/savings account if it's so important?

Not to be unkind but you chose to relocate - Lloyds Banking Group / Halifax decided it's not worthwhile to retain the overseas business. Same as it seems that Netherland's ING don't want to process GBP/Sterling cheques for business reasons. 

What an unhelpful comment.
I don’t know if you are aware, but there is currently a global pandemic, making it extremely difficult to simply get on a cheap flight.

gg23

lhsecons said:

dahj said:

Can you not get a cheap flight back to the UK and open another current/savings account if it's so important?

Not to be unkind but you chose to relocate - Lloyds Banking Group / Halifax decided it's not worthwhile to retain the overseas business. Same as it seems that Netherland's ING don't want to process GBP/Sterling cheques for business reasons. 

What an unhelpful comment.
I don’t know if you are aware, but there is currently a global pandemic, making it extremely difficult to simply get on a cheap flight.

It is?
A quick search in Google flights shows a flight from Amsterdam to Stansted this Thursday for £63 return. The issue isn't getting on a cheap flight, it's the 14-day quarantine the OP will have to endure

Zilversmid

After weeks of persistent telephone calls and much frustrations I have at long last had the full amount of my SAVINGS account transferred by the Lloyds banking International Transfer office.
Getting there was not easy by any means, once through to the department things proceeded well thanks to complete details of the English account and Dutch IBAN / BIC codes + the knowledge of theNATO phonetic alphabet.