Canada - British Expat Forum

Hi everyone

My wife and I are planning in moving to Edmonton next year, preparations are going well. One thing I cant seem to do is open a bank account in Canada from here. I've read the post "Can you set up a Canadian bank account from UK?" but that conversation was 3 years ago and all the banks I've tried to open an account with require a branch visit. Has anybody got any pointers?

Cheers

It can be done - we set up an HSBC Canadian account from the UK before coming out here. I can't remember exactly what we did (sorry) but it was something like this:

- contacted HSBC in UK and asked about opening an account in Canada
- they put us in touch with the Canadian side and we opened an HSBC Canadian internet account over the phone through them, then deposited cash into this account via an FX broker.

This is not a recommendation or otherwise for HSBC - the same approach may work for other banks, this is just what we ended up doing.

Once you are over here you will find it's easy to get another account, particularly after a few months of building up some credit history. You may find the limits on your account and credit cards etc. rather low for a while, but it rapidly improves.

Good luck

Ah, I forgot to mention we're not on speaking terms HSBC

Heres a thought, do any of the Canadian banks have UK branches and if so would they do a UK credit check to open a Canadian account from the UK?

Cheers

No... Sorry, they have business banks here, but are not interested in normal cheque and savings accounts. I tried all that.

We got a free account through our HSBC premier account here in the UK.

The other bank we are with is Scotiabank. They are very good.