Currently in the process of moving from the UK back to Republic of Ireland and will be out of here end of next month. Had an account with NatWest who told me I wouldn’t be able to keep my account so currently at a crossroads as I still have direct debits I need to pay after I move but no way to “legally” do it; don’t have anybody who wants me to put their address on my bank - anybody know of any banks that will allow the common folk to have an internationally accessible bank account? (no minimum deposits/balances)
Barclays will for a fee I believe.
Ignore, looks to be only those with 100k funds.
Revolut - do they, or Wise, not give you UK account details?
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Can you keep your UK bank account when moving abroad? - Wise list of banks in this article
I think the simplest way is to keep a UK address on the account (using relatives or friend you trust) and don’t tell them you’re living abroad (though might not be “legal”?). I did that when I was living in Canada and Australia as a student, put my parents UK address as my address.
No idea why UK banks are so harsh about keeping accounts open for people living abroad. I still have my accounts with banks in Australia and Canada. They now have my UK address and tax details on the accounts and they post letters and new cards to me in the UK - free of charge too.
Revolut gives UK bank details but if you’re residing outside of the UK, you can’t use direct debits 
Haven’t given Wise a go but will look more into them!
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I kept both a Halifax debit and credit card for a number of years when I moved from UK to ROI and that wasn’t an issue with an Irish address on both accounts, until 2021 when Brexit was enacted and I had to give both up.
If I recall rightly, the issue stemmed to passporting rules, ie - customers were no longer able to open new UK bank accounts in the EU and those that did have accounts were able to keep them but with significant changes around protections such as deposit insurance. I think ultimately, the UK banks just closed those customer accounts rather than complying with the new rules.
Interestingly the Irish banks (AIB, BOI) will not open Sterling accounts for ROI customers either even though they operate under a UK license in NI.
I suspect you will have trouble with this regardless of who the bank is.
The best bet, depending on what you need from a UK account when back here, is to use Revolut / Wise.
Although bear in mind if you have a Revolut account already in the UK - you will need to close it and open a new one in ROI under the Lithuanian entity (for exactly the same reasons described above)
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Had an account with NatWest who told me I wouldn’t be able to keep my account
Really? That surprises me - I (US citizen) opened joint checking & savings accounts with NatWest back when we were students in 2011, and then left them dormant when we moved back to the States in 2012.. When we moved back to the UK in 2017 they were still sitting there for us, we just needed to order new debit cards.
Don’t say anything, trusted family member address and hope for the best? Most people I know who lived between the UK/ROI have done this for years or even a decade+
Love a bit of fraud.
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@Dan5 the bots being sensitive again.
I didn’t get a notification about the flag, so I’m not sure how to disgard it. I have unhidden your post though 
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Thanks, can kinda understand why it triggered, it doesn’t like sarcasm
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The difficulty is in moving to a an EU country. What you need is a bank that operates in the UK and EU and for that, the simplest option is HSBC. Wise isn’t a bank but would do for DDs etc.
If you mean HSBC Continental Europe (ex HSBC France) they sold their retail operations last year. They only do commercial banking now.
Yeah I guess it’s not the most above board way to do it… I had to update my address in an ROI AIB branch when I moved over and they seemed fine with the idea of me giving a family members address, but probably not in line with their 500 page long terms of service to do that
I don’t think they need to operate as a retail bank, they just need to have an EU banking license of some form to allow the passporting.
Would they let you retain an account opened when you were in the UK?
I’m not sure about the Irish ones and maybe worth asking them to find out…
I believe the issue arose purely on oversight and consumer protections; for example, UK FSCS isn’t going to cover a citizen living in a 3rd country in the event of bank failure and on the flip side, the 3rd country may have problems with oversight and enforcement of the UK bank in the event of consumer disputes. But I guess this works both ways too and explains EU banks withdrawing services from UK customers at the same time.
I do remember reading into it at the time when Halifax wrote to me, and there was provision by the EBA for UK banks to transfer customer deposits to EU branches (if they had an EU presence and license), otherwise they had to enter separate arrangements around consumer and deposit protections and I guess the UK banks without an EU presence made the decision not to do that (maybe just the cost and admin burden didn’t make it worthwhile).
But the Irish banks do have licenses and presence in both jurisdictions so it may be worth an ask - it’s not something they publicly offer but then Ireland is a bit of a unique case with dual currencies and jurisdictions in a single market area 
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I think it would do. Certainly I’ve seen EU based banks trumpeting their €100000 guarantee in the past, with no geographic restrictions. I personally would be OK to have that guarantee in place and was never bothered that the Fineco guarantee was from the Italian government rather than the UK government.
On the Irish banks front, I’m quite sure that there are significant numbers of people who have accounts on both sides of the border. The one thing that seems to be key is to open it in, say, Ireland before you move to the UK or vice versa.