Transferring Savings Overseas

PineconeZ1

With rumours of an economic crash on the horizon, I have been thinking of spreading my meagre savings across multiple bank accounts and would like advice about how to open an overseas bank account without having to physically visit the country and have an address there? 

bostonerimus

What do you hope to achieve by moving money out of the UK? Where are you thinking, IOM, Channel Islands?

wmb194

PineconeZ1 said:

With rumours of an economic crash on the horizon, I have been thinking of spreading my meagre savings across multiple bank accounts and would like advice about how to open an overseas bank account without having to physically visit the country and have an address there? 

You could look at Fineco. It's an Italian bank that offers multi currency bank and stockbroking accounts in the UK. You can then keep your deposits in euros, pounds, dollars and some other currencies. It isn't paying any internet at the moment, though.

https://finecobank.co.uk/public/

Matt1510

wmb194 said:

PineconeZ1 said:

With rumours of an economic crash on the horizon, I have been thinking of spreading my meagre savings across multiple bank accounts and would like advice about how to open an overseas bank account without having to physically visit the country and have an address there? 

You could look at Fineco. It's an Italian bank that offers multi currency bank and stockbroking accounts in the UK. You can then keep your deposits in euros, pounds, dollars and some other currencies. It isn't paying any internet at the moment, though.

https://finecobank.co.uk/public/

Interest not internet.

cwep2

Alternatives to Fineco are Revolut and Wise.
Revolut offers interest on USD via savings pots (currently 1.15%) and transferring between currencies probably the best FX rates of the 3. They also have 1.67% interest on GBP if you want to keep it there and wait for the FX rate to move to a good/particular level. No interest on Eur or other currencies but they have a wide range if you want anything from Arab Emirates Dinars or Danish Crowns to South African Rand.

These suggestions will give you options if you want to spread your money across currencies. 

Daliah

cwep2 said:

Alternatives to Fineco are Revolut and Wise.

They aren't real alternatives as Fineco is a bank and neither Wise nor Revolut are, they are only payment services providers. There is a significant difference in deposit protection.

Though whether you'd use a bank or a payment services provider, you are almost certainly guaranteed to lose money in the exchange process. It is still unclear where the OP is thinking of moving their money to, so we have no idea what currency/ies they have in mind. Most of all, we don't know what the OP is hoping to achieve by moving their money out of the UK. 

PineconeZ1

My reason for asking is because I am looking for alternative places to save my cash should the UK ever go cashless and change to a digital currency.

PineconeZ1

Which is potentially on the horizon now that Charles is King.  Coins and Notes will be need to be changed to display his image on them, so I suspect everything may go digital.  

wmb194

PineconeZ1 said:

Which is potentially on the horizon now that Charles is King.  Coins and Notes will be need to be changed to display his image on them, so I suspect everything may go digital.  

No, notes and coins will be printed and minted with his image. It's not a big deal.

Notepad_Phil

PineconeZ1 said:

Which is potentially on the horizon now that Charles is King.  Coins and Notes will be need to be changed to display his image on them, so I suspect everything may go digital.  

Currency using the Queen's head will remain legal tender so don't worry on that score, they'll just coexist with any currency that gets released with Charles' head on.

I'm old enough to remember the sixties and pre-decimalisation coinage, where you could occaionally see coins with Queen Victoria's head on it i.e. the coins were at least 60 years old.

Whenever I got an old thruppenny bit (i.e. 3 old pennies or 1.25p nowadays) I'd alway check to see if it was dated 1937 and had the head of King Edward VIII on it as it was worth a small fortune as he abdicated before any currency was generally released.

bd10

If you venture outside the UK market, consider the deposit protection levels available in other countries. US protection levels are significantly higher (FDIC is $250k) than UK (typically £85k) and France/Germany EUR 100k (whether this is across whole EU, one would have to double-check). I would also familiarise myself with the local jurisdiction and financial regulations applicable. Off-shore does not neccessarily imply more secure.

Not sure what rumours you're referring to, but assuming we're talking about a recession, which is getting priced in markets, we have had many recessions in the past whereby our savings deposits were not negatively impacted. Sure, during the GFC, the money market froze and many savings institutions got in serious trouble. I doubt this recession will turn out to be anything like that.