Banks

I just joined this site, so I may have missed this discussed previously. I am getting ready to spend a semester in London and I was wondering if there are any banks in London that are also in the US?

There is at least one branch of Citibank.  For a list of all banks that operate in the UK, visit www.bba.org.uk and browse the list of Members.

HSBC has a lot of branches in the UK, mainly in London, I believe.

Note that even though the banks may have the same name and be owned by the same parent company, the branches in the two countries don't have to be "connected" - e.g. you can't walk into an HSBC branch in London and have the cashier take care of an account you have at a Chicago branch.

HSBC has a lot of branches in the UK, mainly in London, I believe.

In fact, HSBC is the largest bank in the UK - the HSBC international headquarters are in London and there are 1,500 branches in England and Wales alone (not just in London)!

This is compared to only 425 branches in the whole of the United States (400 in New York and only 25 in the other 49 states), so you won't have much trouble at all finding an HSBC bank in the UK.

But, as sweetpeach said above, just because it's the same company name, doesn't mean that if you have a US HSBC account you can just transfer it over to the UK - you would have to open up a whole new account from scratch, although already having an account in the US may make the process of opening the new account easier (I'm not too sure on that though).

In fact, HSBC is the largest bank in the UK - the HSBC international headquarters are in London and there are 1,500 branches in England and Wales alone (not just in London)!

....
But, as sweetpeach said above, just because it's the same company name, doesn't mean that if you have a US HSBC account you can just transfer it over to the UK - you would have to open up a while new account from scratch, although already having an account in the US may make the process of opening the new account easier (I'm not too sure on that though).

Based on my anecdotal experience from 10 years ago, I opened a Hong Kong Bank of Canada (Midland Bank / HSBC equivalent in Canada) account 6 months before arriving in the UK and it did seem to make the transfer easier to a Midland bank account, as it was then. Whether would now be easier, especially with tightened money laundering laws, who knows? I find banking increasingly a challenge at times in the UK and I live here.....

I was planning on opening an HSBC account in the US before I moved over. They said it wouldn't make a difference in regard to whether I could open an HSBC account in the US, so I didn't bother.

Oh, sadness. I was hoping to open an account at HSBC over here (in the states) before going to the UK in a few months so I wouldn't have to worry about opening an account there.

Is there any bank that would allow that?

No.

I stopped by HSBC today and they told me that I could open an account here, in the states and, if they're given about 3 weeks notice, they would take care of opening an account with HSBC UK for me. I'm hoping that works out!