How to Open An Offshore Bank Account

so an Australian friend of mine called me recently and said hey Andrew I'm gonna be in Singapore I know you bank in Singapore and can you help me open my offshore bank account I'm gonna be there so I gave him some advice told him what to do told him where to go he called me afterwards and said hey Andrew they wouldn't open my account I'm gonna tell you what he did wrong I'm gonna tell you specifically how to open in an offshore bank account in almost any situation in this video [Music] hi man from Henderson and if you want to open an offshore bank account there's a few things that you need to know my friend who was visiting Singapore ran into a few issues that could have easily been avoided what you have to understand about offshore banking is that there are several different types of offshore bank accounts and there are several different ways to go about opening them but the first thing to understand is banking offshore is really not that much different than banking onshore throw in the word offshore and people imagine some great level of mysticism like there's some incredibly complicated structure that has to be followed kind of like photography becoming wedding photography and tripling in price the reality for most people is that you can walk into a bank and open an account you can download an app and open an account or you can open an account what's called remotely through correspondence let's talk about going into an a bank and opening an account in a lot of countries that are just real countries they have real economies you can simply walk into a bank I made a video here on YouTube about opening a bank account in Georgia even in an appointment you don't need an introduction you can just go to the bank and you can walk in and say hey I'd like to open an account you have your passport you have your address and they will help you open an account now obviously some physical banks require you to have an appointment if you're going to open a private banking account or a priority banking account you may well want an appointment if you're opening account and their traditional offshore setting like the Cayman Islands they may not take walk-ins at all but if you're going to one of these countries that's just a regular country Hong Kong Georgia pending number of other places you can call the bank and say hey do you accept foreigners I don't have a residence permit don't have a work permit I'm not living there but I'm gonna be visiting let me come in and open an account a lot of banks and a lot of countries in recent years have cracked down on this because of ever stricter know your customer rules the banks are de-risking and they don't want to take people who are a risk which is why countries like Singapore now want you to put two hundred thousand dollars in in most cases versus $1,000 for 200,000 it's worth their time to check in to you for 1000 it's not but once you've identified the country where you can just walk in the best thing you get to keep in mind is you want to look professional you want to know why you're gonna open the account and you want to have all the particulars about your situation so the bank is going to ask you where do you pay tax are you a US taxpayer what do you want the account for what do you plan to do with the account what's your initial deposit those are all standard questions that they're gonna ask you if you are like hey yeah I'm coming to Singapore because I hear like you don't have any tax and your bank accounts and I can like put my money here like they're not going to open an account if you show up as my friend did in a ratty looking t-shirt a lot of banks particularly in Asia may not open you account and so there's a variable when it comes to opening an offshore bank account in person where a lot of times you have to deal with the bureaucracy banks can be just as bad as the government where if you happen to be unlucky and you get the person who's new and it says oh yeah I know we don't take people in that situation you may just need to come back that's why I often recommend going to the main branch of the bank because you don't want to go to some suburban branch where they have you know Sally sitting in a desk and she's just used to people bringing in and depositing checks for their construction business you want to go to the main branch where people maybe have some idea of how things work in terms of the bank's real policies because the reality is any bank employee can just say yeah yeah we don't do that they may be wrong but if that's the bank employee you get then you'll either have to come back later or just give up entirely so understanding why you want the account having your address having your passport having all the details of your situation is going to be very important and so again you can call the bank you can figure out what's required what documents they want if they accept people in your situation if they want you to make an appointment you can do that in advance my team at nomad capitalists we keep a list of like 425 different banks and we update it on a constant basis of which banks are accepting which people what's the deposit that information is constantly changing banks are constantly yet we're not taking US citizens anymore yeah no more expats one bank in Singapore said we're not taking UK citizens so no one video can cover that all if you follow the basics you can just work with the banks and figure out and then use that protocol to walk in and open the account in person that's for a personal account if you want a business account of course you need the details on the business now remote account opening made a video on that you can check it out here as well where I talked about how this is falling in a favor with me because of all the KYC because of how difficult it is to do that remotely but a lot of people have an interest from what they've researched on the offshore industry over the years of just filling out some forms from an offshore bank and Belize Caymans Cook Islands Vanuatu whatever they fill the forms they send a notarized copy of their passport they send some of their documentation to the bank and the bank basically does everything that they would do in the branch but they do it with you sitting at home on your sofa the challenge with this is it's gonna take them longer in many cases the banks are gonna have higher fees I talked about all that in my remote account opening video but that's certainly an option if you don't want to go to the bank you can open an account in some of these offshore jurisdictions and there's gonna be more paperwork it's gonna be more expensive but you can save yourself the trip the new thing that is attracting a lot of attention from folks there these FinTech solutions whether it's neat in hong kong whether it's lupe whether it's bunk there are a lot of these revolute a lot of these new kind of app based banks I think these are very interesting the challenge that they have with these app based banks as easy as they seem is that number one in some cases they're only open to certain people so certain apps are only open to EU citizens or residents so that excludes a lot of people and if you're trying to be tax optimized beginning your resident may not be the best thing to be so that it excludes some of them but they also have a problem with these apps is that besides some of the stability concerns people have brought up I'm at neccesary sure like I believe all that but you know these accounts have closed people down I look at these accounts as being rather similar to online bank accounts that you'd have in like the United States I had an account with a lie bank once the United States and I've been logging in from overseas a lot because I was living overseas and eventually they sent me an email saying we're closing your account and we're sending you a check for the balance and I had about a quarter of a million dollars in the account and they sent it to some old address they said well we couldn't verify the address that you gave us most recently so we just finished the previous address which was a house that at that point I had sold like two years earlier and so I had to frantically call the people who bought the house for me had to call the real estate agent ahead of him call and like track this thing down and put a stop payment on it and they weren't really very helpful because they don't understand like you're in Romania or one so it was a real stressful thing now that's not a FinTech account that's just a online bank account but these new app based accounts to me are just not as robust I understand that a lot of people like them they are easy to use you can send them money the fees are lower for me opening an office or a bank account isn't saving a few bucks on fees I have an ATM card that lets me withdraw any where fee free and I pay spot rate on withdrawals but that's not really my main purpose and so if you're looking for kind of a basic offshore bank account you want to park some money these new app based solutions can work for you and it's just a matter of going and downloaded the app scanning a copy of your passport in many cases in one case I think we tested that bunk and you have to do it a live chat with them you've got to show the the passport in front of your face and a woman shouted at me and it's just very difficult so for me I like the traditional banks where you just go in you open an account all these accounts are increasingly becoming more difficult because governments are making it more difficult to move your money governments are demanding that banks know their customer more than ever they're making sure that information is being shared to where a lot of banks don't want to open accounts not just for Americans but for people who are tax resident anywhere outside of their jurisdiction but hopefully that gives you kind of an introductory perimeter to what you need to do if you're going in person and what you need to do if you're doing it through correspondence and we have a lot more videos offshore banking here in our channel so if you're new to this idea and you want to figure out more specific solutions definitely check those out as well I'm Andrew Henderson and if you're looking for a way to legally reduce your taxes build your freedom and create wealth faster as a global citizen then you've come to the right place I want you to do three things right now number one click the buttons to subscribe to our channel make sure to get notifications so you never miss a new video number two get a copy of our number one best-selling book no mad capitalist on Amazon and learn all the dozens of benefits of our lifestyle and number three if you're already a six or seven figure entrepreneur and you want to put these strategies in place go to Nomad capitalist calm and find out how to get some help

Channel: Nomad Capitalist

Views: 67,725

Rating: 4.9074612 out of 5

Keywords: offshore bank account, offshore banking, opening an offshore bank account, nomad capitalist, banking overseas, how to open an offshore account, how to open an offshore bank account, banking overseas for us citizens, banking business, remote banking, remote bank account opening, fintech banking, app based banking

Id: 9bEmbBJbtWI

Length: 10min 18sec (618 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 06 2019