The Ultimate Guide to Opening a Bank Account for Expats

Moving to a new country can be daunting. Not having access to cash can be even worse, especially in Hong Kong where many of the small shops don’t want to deal with your overseas cards. Here at MoneyHero.com.hk we hope to help you solve some of these difficulties, with our step-by-step guide for expats.

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Which bank should I choose in Hong Kong?

There is no clear winner here. When opening a bank account in Hong Kong, general saving accounts, while they have some variation, are very similar. Note you can still get a credit card at a bank even if you hold your deposit account at another.

When choosing your bank, you might want to think about the following features:

• Where do you live / work? Visiting banks in person is an annoying but necessary part of the HK banking experience, therefore you should choose a bank that has a branch near your home or place of work. Note that SCB’s branches close at 5pm, HSBC’s branches close at 4:30pm while Citibank have extended working hours to 7pm during weekdays. Also, you can withdraw cash from ATMs, which are everywhere in Hong Kong.
• Do you transfer money overseas regularly? If so, you should pay attention to the transaction fee and the conversion rate of the currency. You may have some more ideas by looking at the below chart.
• What do your family / friends have? Most of the banks in Hong Kong will charge you a fee if you try and make an express transfer inter-bank. Make sure you open the same bank account if you have to do transaction regularly to a particular person.

You can see below an overview of some of the features of the main banks in HK. HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank and Citibank are selected, as they are the global banks which would be the best options for expats to open a bank account.



When I arrive at the bank, what do I need?

Hong Kong is notorious for the amount of paperwork required to open a bank account. You can speed this up by coming prepared with the following.

Tips to speed up / get the application done

Many of you will probably encounter tons of problems when you try to open a bank account in Hong Kong. You may need to go to different branches and talk with different bank representatives, submit some documents, re-submit the documents you have submitted, make a lot of calls, visit a bank branch often, receive lots of calls or wait for ages for credit cards to arrive. So here are some tips from MoneyHero.com.hk for you to avoid the above problems.

• Go to the branch and manager where others have successfully applied with the same documents that you have.
• Make sure all the information you input is exactly the same as on the documents you provide - even the sequence of address parts, symbols and words could affect your application. For instance, use "Company Name Ltd." if it's stated "Company Name Ltd." in your employment contract, but not "Company Name" or "Company Name LTD".

What should I ask?

Hong Kong still has stringent banking regulations to comply with, meaning there are a couple of devices you should set up at the same time as your bank account. Be sure to take this list with you, as these items will not always be given unless requested.

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