Your British bank account

Move to England and you will have a bank account within days. Stay where you live and you soon find that the big high-street banks want a UK address. Barclays and Lloyds say so on their own pages, and HSBC describes it as the way the market works. Without UK residence the road almost always runs through the international arms of the British banking groups in Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man, or through Gibraltar.

Different rules apply there: their own regulators, their own law, their own deposit protection. The UK's FSCS, with its £120,000 limit, does not cover your money on the islands. Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man protect individuals up to £50,000 per bank; Gibraltar up to £120,000. Knowing that in advance changes how you spread your money.

One thing holds everywhere. The UK, the Crown Dependencies and the Overseas Territories all report accounts under the CRS to the country where you are tax resident. An island account is a second foothold in a stable legal system and a hard currency, not a hiding place. You declare the income where you are tax resident.

Sebastian has done business with the islands for twenty years and knows their banking market: solid, expensive, and with rules that shift every year. With the Island Banking Introduction we find the bank that accepts your country of residence and your amount, prepare the application and stay with it until the bank decides.

If you are planning more than an account and are thinking of moving to one of the islands, everything on residence, tax and cost is in our British islands section. For accounts outside the British world, our sister project Freedom Banking compares more than thirty jurisdictions.