News story: UK banks to shut thousands of British expats' accounts 1 October 2020 at 8:28AM in Budgeting & bank accounts 66 replies 5.5K views

MSE_Laura_F

News story now live:

UK banks to shut thousands of British expats' accounts - what to do if yours is being closed

NottinghamKnight

Live several days/ weeks ago. What to do is presumably move banks, job jobbed.

colsten

Been discussed for a couple of weeks already on this forum: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6190187/brexit-expats-and-u-k-bank-accounts

Poor research by MSE, as per my comment in that thread.

brianposter

Looks like UK banks have not learnt the lesson of Aldi and Lidl.

Thrugelmir

Is this a news story? 

headers47

Please correct your table of banks and their situation we already know that Barclays and Lloyd’s have served notice on thousands of account holders. I am led to believe that NatWest has withdrawn its offer of Bank account for non U.K. residents. How are we supposed to find out who will keep a bank account facility open? 

born_again

brianposter said:

Looks like UK banks have not learnt the lesson of Aldi and Lidl.

Except that a shop does not have to have a licence to trade in another country.

eskbanker

headers47 said:

Please correct your table of banks and their situation we already know that Barclays and Lloyd’s have served notice on thousands of account holders.

Not sure that would be 'correcting' it - the table says that closure timescales vary by country for those banks and doesn't specify different dates for serving the advance notice, but with accounts closing from next month it's inevitable that some notice will have been given already for at least some.  Edit: sorry, that's just Lloyds I was looking at, Barclays is left non-committal, so as below, I'm sure they'd update if definitive info available.

headers47 said:

I am led to believe that NatWest has withdrawn its offer of Bank account for non U.K. residents.

If you have attributable authoritative sources for that then I'm sure the author of the piece would be happy to update it.

headers47 said:

How are we supposed to find out who will keep a bank account facility open? 

How can MSE or anyone else offer definitive guidance when banks are telling them that they haven't decided yet?  What are you proposing?

colsten

eskbanker said:

How can MSE or anyone else offer definitive guidance when banks are telling them that they haven't decided yet?  What are you proposing?

Perhaps MSE should not  be offering "...what to do if yours is being closed" in the headline if they don't actually know what people should do? As they don't even mention the stop-gap through Transferwise, their recommendation is really not up to the usual MSE standard. 

NottinghamKnight

Surely HSBC and Santander are fairly safe options currently.

eskbanker

colsten said:

eskbanker said:

How can MSE or anyone else offer definitive guidance when banks are telling them that they haven't decided yet?  What are you proposing?

Perhaps MSE should not  be offering "...what to do if yours is being closed" in the headline if they don't actually know what people should do? As they don't even mention the stop-gap through Transferwise, their recommendation is really not up to the usual MSE standard. 

My comment was specifically about headers47 castigating them for not knowing the definitive position of banks even when they haven't been declared, rather than trying to defend the whole piece, but to be fair they do make various suggestions of what to do, even if there is a better one omitted.  Wonder if they read the linked threads about such articles....