Quick question to all the good people of this forum - what is the best/cheapest way for a UK person to diversify their wealth away from UK ie opening a bank account say in Germany or France as a preference?
All opinion highly welcomed and appreciated
Investment wise, but a global equity ETF.
Cash wise, you could use a Revolut account for foreign currency? Not 100% on their FX rates as there will be fees somewhere.
I would keep cash in a UK institution due to the FSCS protection.
Santander and Starling have a Euro bank account. My partner is French and still has a French bank account, we’re currently looking to move that money to the UK but keep it in Euro so have started looking at the above.
I think TransferWise (now known as “Wise”) allows accounts in different currencies such as USD, AUD and EUR.
It is a UK bank, I believe Starling is also, so if you are concerned about systemic risks or a collapse of the “system” (very much a very unlikely doomsday scenario) and if you have a lot of money and really really want to diversify from the UK then you may want to put money into a country that is either very stable such as Switwerland (or maybe Japan) or a country that is likely to be less correlated to the UK such as China or some of the either potentially less stable (politically or financially) or less globalised countries that may not be as integrated into the financial system (eg. Kazakhstan, Georgia, Turkey or Argentina). I wouldn’t consider the latter unless you are somewhat rich and can afford to put a tiny small fraction of your wealth somewhere else “just in case”. It’s not my approach and I have nowhere near enough wealth to consider it, but it may be something interesting to consider if you are rich.
Having said that, my view is that something like that is very unlikely, but for peace of mind I imagine you can probably get a swiss bank account. Unfortunately it is not something I’ve looked into.
As Dougal mentions, other countries protect different amounts to the UK (generally protect less) so check that before setting and account up and transferring money.