Former UK resident needing to open a sterling savings account

After living in the UK for a long period (during which time I obtained a British passport), I left and since received a reasonable sum in sterling from the sale of the home I used to live in.

And I have a small problem: the proceeds of the house are all sitting in a single account (one I had before leaving), and its balance is above the FSCS deposit protection limit. I'd like to spread it between banks for safety, but AFAIK no UK bank will open a new account for a nonresident.

Does anyone have any creative ideas about how I can protect my GBP savings from the risk of bank failure? Are there either UK banks who do offer accounts for nonresidents, or banks in other jurisdictions offering sterling accounts with reasonable interest rates? (reasonable taking into consideration that the current best buys in the UK instant access savings market pay around 1.5%)

This money will ultimately not remain in the UK and end up as either euros or US dollars. But due to the poor exchange rate I would rather not convert the currency immediately. (My personal opinion is the rates will recover once political uncertainty clears, even if the certainty that emerges is of the no-deal Brexit kind, although you might disagree.)

You may want to consider an international bank. I am not sure of the residency requirements but HSBC (or any of the others) may be able to help.

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I think the deposit protection is per account so you could open multiple savings accounts within your existing bank and spread it about.

That is what I did. It does increase your FBAR reporting and for me meant hitting the FATCA limit as well because of the fuzzy math the IRS uses.

I think the deposit protection is per account so you could open multiple savings accounts within your existing bank and spread it about.

That is what I did. It does increase your FBAR reporting and for me meant hitting the FATCA limit as well because of the fuzzy math the IRS uses.

No, it's per banking institution.

ML explains it here.

An institution is NOT the same as a bank

The protection's per institution, not account. So four accounts with one bank still only get £85,000. The definition of 'institution' depends on a bank's licence and giant banking conglomerates make it complex.

For example, sister banks Halifax and Bank of Scotland's accounts are only covered up to £85,000 combined. RBS and NatWest are also sisters, but their limits are SEPARATE. See the What Counts As A Bank? tool below.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/safe-savings/

You may want to consider an international bank. I am not sure of the residency requirements but HSBC (or any of the others) may be able to help.

Are you referring to offshore divisions of UK banks? (based in the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man) If so, I checked those out already and unfortunately even the best of them offer pretty terrible rates compared to the mainstream UK savings market.

Are you referring to offshore divisions of UK banks? (based in the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man) If so, I checked those out already and unfortunately even the best of them offer pretty terrible rates compared to the mainstream UK savings market.

No, I mean just international banks in general. HSBC has their premier global division with special services if you have a certain amount in accounts with them. I would think others have similar propositions. As an advance customer I could have opened my UK accounts through their international banking center before moving.

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Are you referring to offshore divisions of UK banks? (based in the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man) If so, I checked those out already and unfortunately even the best of them offer pretty terrible rates compared to the mainstream UK savings market.

But the savings rates in the UK are terrible anyway, as you noted, so you would not be "loosing" much in interest in any case!

No, it's per banking institution.

ML explains it here.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/safe-savings/

Thanks for that link, excellent article. It does say that for joint accounts the cover is double, ie £170k. It also says that it is a £1M for “life events” such as temporary savings following the receipt of an inheritance or the sale of a house so we may actually have been covered since the only time we exceeded £170k  in a single bank was for a couple of weeks when we dumped all the money into the one bank from the sale of our US house just before closing on the purchase of our UK house.  We had even maxed out on premium bonds for a few weeks (£50k each) as the principal is guaranteed by the UK government and the money when withdrawn is in your bank account next business day.