"you will need a UK bank account to rent a flat in the UK"
"you will need 3 months of utility bills from your UK address to open a UK bank account"
...those two statements didn't raise any logical issues for the two britons who made them. I'm beginning to detect a pattern. It turns out that setting up a bank account from overseas is a real pain. Firstly, there are no international banks (at least that I could find) who provide the ability to open a bank account in your own country, and just be accessible in another country. Cash machines are no problem, you can use them from anywhere. The same goes for visa/mastercard. However, these don't cut it as far as renting a flat, which is a requirement for me, since my sweet wife refuses to live in either a residence hall or school provided married student housing. The normal way of opening a UK bank account is 1) live in the UK at an address for 3 months, 2) bring proof of #1, and 3) open a local HSBC, Barclays, etc. account. This obviously won't fly for us. The next option is to open a special account set up for the "international customer". Some examples of this are:
- HSBC "Passport" - http://www.hsbc.co.uk/1/2/personal/current-accounts/passport
...this is set up for people like me, but requires at least two separate trips to London 1 week apart, which blows. Reba and I are going to Oxford for 2 weeks this spring to rent a place, and can't be waiting around for paperwork and meetings in London
- HSBC "Premier" - http://www.hsbc.co.uk/1/2/personal/current-accounts/premier-home
...another no-dicer. This wants you to have a mortgage of £200,000 or more with HSBC Bank, or savings or investments of at least £50,000 with HSBC Bank, or annual income of £75,000 or over and a mortgage of £100,000 or over with HSBC Bank; none of which I have or will have.
There are also a bunch of "student" type accounts out there, but that just screams "don't rent to me", from my perspective.
Finally, after scratching my head on this for a while I found this:
- HSBC "Offshore Bank Account" - http://www.offshore.hsbc.com/1/2/international/current-accounts/offshore-bank-account
...this is about as good as I'm going to get. This is an account that lives on one of the channel islands (little islands off the coast of France that are owned by the UK) and takes advantage of funny business rules that allow for this sort of application process. It allows me to do regular checking at any HSBC in the UK, open entirely from the US, and fund from the US. Basically, this will give me a UK account that is ready to rock with a debit card and checks before I show up in June. The downside is that I have to keep a £5000 ($8800) minimum balance, which is crazy, but apparently they're trying to prevent people from racking up a bunch of debt and then splitting. Although since I'm living on savings, I suppose it doesn't matter. I'll probably move to a regular account as soon as I've been there 3 months anyway.
