From a practical perspective, however, would it be difficult for people whose accounts are set to close to just shift their UK banking profiles to a UK address, perhaps a family member’s or a friend’s? For example, when I moved to China for a couple of years for school, I never changed the residential address on any of my banking stuff, and no one said anything, but I’m from the States, so maybe regulations allow for that here or on a “cultural” level, banks here prefer to look the other way.
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This seems like the EU actually not following their own rules. Once you have set up a bank within the EU single market, passporting rights are supposed to apply (obviously U.K. based entities are potentially losing passporting rights, but “British Bank EU Edition” based in Luxembourg should be able to service clients living in Austria, for example).
Also, N26 was different. They entered the U.K. market after the vote to leave, then left before the “final exit date” (end of transition) anyway - so they clearly just left because their product wasn’t successful as their initial entry must have factored Brexit in. They also will do a bespoke product for markets where it suits them, like the US. They just decided it wasn’t economical for them to bother with this for the U.K. - probably because they had only a small number of unprofitable customers. They also realised that the market in banking here was more competitive and rival challengers were more advanced and mature already, so competition was going to be difficult for them. It was the opposite situation in most of their other markets, where the door was open for them and there was a lack of competition.
I’m wondering if what’s happening is that the UK banks in question aren’t actually setting up their own EU entities and are instead applying for licenses for the UK bank itself to operate in each country. Under those circumstances I can see there being complexity involved.
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I don’t know the details of how it could work, but I think they may be allowed to do this (although, as you suggest, perhaps this works legally on the basis of each country’s national authority equivalent of the local banking regulator agreeing with the U.K. bank to list them as an approved “third country operator” - which, because it would be nationally agreed, may have to involve a country-by-country process).
I don’t know enough about it to really understand the legal complexities of that structure, though, or if it actually would be allowed by the EU if we ended up leaving without a deal at the end of the transition.
Hi! I’ve just read through this conversation quickly so i’m not sure if i missed something. Does anyone know if monzo intends to close accounts that are held by people who are tax resident in the EC? It would have a lot of implications for me as i use monzo extensively for traveling.
I understand that you need a uk address, but you can have other tax residencies. Up until now…
You’re the only one who’s suggested that this is changing.
Officially - you need to be a UK resident. That means you need to reside at the address Monzo hold for you.
Monzo don’t hold EU addresses.
This page seems to suggest we only need an address and not tax residency. https://monzo.com/help/legal-stuff/tax-residency-not-uk/
So my concern is that monzo may do the same as other banks and kill off accounts for no residents.
The big change may be that movement in/out of the UK is better recorded (whatever regime we end up with). At the moment, there appears to be no monitoring of residency at all for most people, whereas UK citizens in Germany, for example, will presumably have to register their place of abode on future, just as third country nationals do already. Then there’s a nice paper trail…
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