3 ms·
I remember moving to the UK at 19. I was room sharing so had no bills in my name. I had no job yet, so no payslip. Only documentation was a British passport.
by sonthonax 4y ago
I remember moving to the UK at 19. I was room sharing so had no bills in my name. I had no job yet, so no payslip. Only documentation was a British passport.
I eventually gave up trying to find a bank that would do passport only bank accounts. And just forged a few utility bills. HSBC, despite being the most onerous bank in terms of demanding documentation was the most lax in actually doing any due diligence.
- Nextgrid 4y agoThe problem is that there's ultimately no due diligence you can do on a utility bill that can't be defeated by a fraudster. No utility will answer a call to confirm/deny someone's details (as it can be abused), and even then, utilities that don't rely on a physical location (wireless telecoms/internet) themselves can't prove (and don't particularly care about) the address they have on file so even a legitimate utility account doesn't guarantee the account holder actually has access to that address. The banks are only requiring them to cover their ass because the country seems to have accepted the idea that a utility bill is somehow an authoritative document, so they can claim their due diligence was up to scratch (well they're not wrong, as you can't reasonably do any better) if things go wrong.
- rmccue 4y agoMonzo will do this; I signed up for a bank account without a permanent address, and had one within 30 mins of arriving in the UK. They still require an address to mail you your card (so not the same target market as the OP), but it wasn’t too onerous.