Any banks that let me maintain USD and GBP accounts?

I will be getting married in the UK soon but will continue earning my living in USD as well as still having USD bills to pay. Ideally I would like to find an international bank that allows me to set up a USD checking account as well as a GBP checking account so that I can bulk transfer money whenever I need to. Does anyone have some good recommendations. I'm hoping to find an account setup that gives me the most favorable exchange rate.

Check out HSBC.  We had UK accounts with them first, but moved back to the states.  We were able to do most of the legwork for the US accounts before we moved back and then just activate them once we were on US soil to receive all the docs/check books/etc.

We don't do many transfers, so I don't do extensive research into the rates, but they always seem on par with what is being offered by mainstream banks.  Also, if you have significant savings you may qualify for their premiere accounts, which gives you  no-fee transfers and free ATM withdrawals anywhere. 

They were also able to consider our UK credit when applying for a US mortgage.  That was HUGE for us, as my DH had no US history and was the main income earner.  If we hadn't been able to look at our UK credit scores, we would have been waiting awhile to get settled into a house. 

With HSBC were you able to see both UK and US accounts under the same list online and choose options to transfer between the two? It would be nice to have only one portal to have to log into to manage both.

Hi,

I haven't been looking with any depth recently, but I don't think any bank based either in the UK or USA, will allow/have the option to keep a US Dollar account with a GBP one (or vice versa) when using one of their basic bank accounts. This is down to the fact that no US based bank has UK branches here, and vice versa. Although 'HSBC' has a presence in both (and other countries) the representation in each country is it's own entity. You could argue that they would or could share account information etc, but having worked within the IT infrastructure side of things at some of the biggest financial institutions in the world, it's not as 'simple' as that. Leading on from this, there's also actually extremely little demand for what you'd like, there's really not that many numbers of people actually moving around the world and relocating etc when you take into account population sizes.

I think that if you go up to higher level bank accounts, you might be able to get some sort of connections, but you'll have to ask each banking institution if they have any such functions/capabilities etc.

Lastly, you've sort of answered your own question, it's now so easy to login online to control accounts from anywhere in the world, so there's even less 'demand/reason' for a bank to operate in another country or offer the above aspects in basic bank accounts - do check however with higher level accounts. I'm not American, yet last year I walked into BoA, Chase & Wells Fargo and opened up basic accounts within 25 minutes and I can control them from here. The only aspect is I need to login to each bank's website.

Cheers, DtM! West London & Slough UK!

We have HSBC.

Sorry for not replying sooner.

Yes, once you go through some initial set up work online, your UK and US accounts are linked and it is just a few clicks to transfer money back and forth between the two.  I would say it is about 1 step more than transferring money from say your checking to savings account.  You can see all accounts, including credit cards linked to the accounts.

Opps, I missed your question.  As karin said, HSBC is very easy to use.  If you log into your UK account, on the left you can click on global view to see your US account.  Transfering between the accounts is VERY easy for a small and I think cheapest fee I have found.  After we transfer the money to the US we transfer it to our free checking account in the US.  HSBC charges $20 for checking. 

We set our US account up from the UK and it was kind of a pain but worth it we hope.