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OPENING AN INTERNATIONAL BANK ACCOUNT AS A SOUTH AFRICANUpdate 01/01/2016: My account has now been open for several months, I’ve made payments, received payments and enjoyed a huge platform update from Lloyds, about a month ago, which has made the online banking experience far better. For those of you who follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you’ll know that I’ve been in the process of opening up an International bank account. The good news is that the account is now open and I’m able to transact with it. The process was a great deal easier than I expected (granted, I did do a lot of research), but because a few of you have asked me about it, I have decided to blog about my experience. After a good amount of research I decided to go with Lloyds International. Their entrance requirements were decent, their service has been a pleasure and the offering as a whole suited me well.
Below are the steps that I took to create the account:
I wanted to move money to the UK for personal reasons and therefore I went the option of transferring the £25,000. Keep this in mind, because £25,000 equates to R436,000 R575,000 on 01/01/2016) which is a huge amount as a deposit. If you’re a business owner, it might make sense to bump up your salary for several months to avoid the initial deposit. Nevertheless, I went the deposit route. Once I had applied for an account online, I received a call from an international wealth advisor (Anna) who was an absolute pleasure to deal with. Expect to be asked quite a few questions about why you want an account, what you plan on doing with the account, is it for short term or long term usage, what you do for a living and so forth – I think that if you’re opening up an account you’ll be able to answer these questions quite easily. Following this, you’ll be asked to supply three things:
Once the documents were done, I posted them off via the post office (R8 for the envelope and R32 in stamps if I recall correctly). It took just a few days for them to arrive with Lloyds as I received a confirmation email informing me that my account was now open and that I’d receive further information in the post shortly: I am now in the process of dealing with a foreign exchange company that will handle the transfer of the funds from my South African FNB account to my International Lloyds one through Investec. I’m using a foreign exchange company as I save about 1% in comparison to using FNB (or a bank) to handle the transfer. Sounds like a little, but do the math and you’ll see that it’s a decent few grand. Exactly a week after receiving the above email I received the information in the post as well as a call from Lloyds to help me set up Phone Banking and Internet Banking, as well as to explain the BIC, IBAN, SORT and such codes and passwords. It didn’t take too much longer than 15 minutes to get everything sorted out and I was logged into my online banking. The Lloyds Banking interface is actually quite scary, it looks like a quick throw together (Update 01/01/2016: Their entire interface was updated a month ago and it’s really sleek now): I had a meeting with the company handling the transfer of the money, I had to fill out a lot of forms including declarations, FICA and so forth. I’d recommend having someone who can certify documents around, I used my lawyer as it was the most convenient. You’ll need a copy of your ID and a utility bill to go along with your other personal details. These are further used to open an Investec bank account into which you deposit your money. Following that, the forex company takes the money from the Investec account and transfers it to the foreign account. Once I’d successfully transferred the money, my next step will be to research various investment vehicles internationally. Because you need to keep a balance of £2,500 in your account to avoid bank charges, I’ll have £22,500 to invest and I think I’ll more than likely go for an ETF of sorts that tracks the FTSE 100 which seems to be doing alright in comparison to what the International marks have been doing. I’m open to advice though, please do share your knowledge in the comments below! That’s where my mind is at right now, but my research might uncover something else so I’ll update this post or write a new one based on what I finally go with. If you have any questions, drop me a line and I’ll do my best to answer them. |
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