Evolution of banking services in England

I don't live in the UK at the moment, but earlier this year we as a family visited the UK. Nearly everything was paid by contactless which I was not used to, but soon got the hang of it. I applied for new debit and credit cards from my bank in the UK and they either got lost or were massively delayed or never got sent out at all. This happened twice during our 6 weeks stay and they should have been sent to my brothers address down in Dorset.

I tried to open a bank account with HSBC but since I wasn't living in the UK they initially refused. But since I have HSBC accounts overseas, they finally agreed to open a savings account for me over the phone. Fortunately they called me for the phone interview. Now I can make internaito0nal transfers with no fees.

I also opened an account with the Bank of Scotland. They accepted that I lived overseas, but made it very easy and I even got a credit card. I'd heard stories that unless you have a UK address then you couldn't open an account in the UK, but I now know that it isn't true, or not entirely true.

One thing that wasn't good is that I transferred quite a lot of money to HSBC in the UK from overseas, in order to make a top up payment for my state pension. I'd already received my 18 digit unique number and payment details from the pensions office, but when I tried to make the transfer I found out that I couldn't make a transfer to a new payee from my HSBC account. So I finally transferred my money back to Asia (no transfer fees again) and used money from my private pension in the UK to make the top up. So I am a littled unhappy with HSBC in the UK.

Since I am living overseas, I am using Wise, and often transfer from my local bank in the UK to Wise and then on to my local bank overseas. It takes seconds, with excellent exchange rates and very low fees.

Many bank branches are closing in the UK as more and more people are doing online banking so these days we really need to be pretty savvy with banking apps and online banking.