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Comment by gnicholas | Hacker News Reader

What qualifies as an "extended amount of time overseas"? If you go on a vacation for 6-8 weeks, does that get you in trouble? I would think banks would want to keep big spenders who can afford months-long international travel.

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Banks don't really have much choice in the matter. They have been deputized to enforce federal laws, and given penalties if they don't. To add a cherry on top, the laws are vague and require the bank to investigate, judge, and execute account closures.

That being said, if you know when are are leaveing,.where you are going, and when you will be home, you can often put a vacation note on your account, and then the bank will know you are on vacation. That is what I did when I spent this summer in Japan, using.my bank debit card because it has no foreign transaction fees, the whole time.

they are vague they catch every tom, dick and garry but so strict that every cartel still has acees to the banking system

The point isn't necessarily to cut money laundering down to zero, it's to add significant cost and effort so it makes the cartels job harder. Every international border isn't airtight either and causes a bunch of hassle for travelers, but we don't throw up our hands and give up the idea of border control.

> we don't throw up our hands and give up the idea of border control.

We must reside in different countries. Being in USA, I observe we did drop enforcement on the southern border.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/06/23/kama...

"... administration has ended the Trump-era Migrant Protection Protocol, a policy that forced asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico as they await their court hearings, and has halted construction on a wall ..."

The Biden administration has decided to build the wall, as of fall 2023: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/06/us/border-wall-biden.html

This is confusing. According to that article twenty miles will be built because present administration is unable to stop it.

  "... building up to 20 miles of border wall because he has to. The administration said that it was bound to build this section of new wall because Congress already appropriated the funding to do so in 2019. It had been unsuccessful in convincing Congress to rescind the funding, Mr. Mayorkas said."

Seems other parts will not be built, and materials were sold off already.

https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-border-wall-material-auct...

It's like USA personality changes every few months, and there are unlimited funds for these games.

It's a choice to not fight it, likely because they realize that this is a losing issue for them (the administration, and the Dems more generally).

A single retail account is of no consequence to a national bank that has tens of millions of customers. It doesn't matter if you're spending $10 or $50,000 a month. They care about you as an individual about as much as Google cares about a single Gmail account. If an algorithm flags you as potential trouble, off you go.

If you want better service, there are two ways. One is to be an ultra high net worth individual. But the threshold for that is pretty high - from what I recall, real private banking nowadays starts around $5M to 10M in assets with a single institution. The term "millionaire" doesn't mean as much as it did in the 1990s.

The other option is to go with a small local bank or a credit union. If you're in a CU with 10,000 members, it's a lot easier to resolve problems or discuss unique circumstances.

For pseudo private banking, HSBC Premier is decent if you travel often to Europe or Asia. They are basically Wise for HNWs with a dash of money laundering thrown in.

Looks like they have a $50 monthly account maintenance fee, unless you have $75k on deposit, a qualifying mortgage, or $5k in monthly direct deposit. I guess the latter is the easiest, but this is significantly more onerous than any bank I've looked at.

$75K/$5K per month is a very low threshold for private banking, other banks usually require somewhere in the three digits range.

What's the additional value beyond what you'd get with a standard checking account? As GP said, this is like pseudo-private banking. [1]

1: https://www.us.hsbc.com/checking-accounts/products/premier/

You get priority support for telephone banking and you get a dedicated account manager (not sure if it's a fully accredited banker). You are automatically classified as one of the highest tiered customers for them and can get preferred rates etc. on many other services. Aside from HNW individuals, they also traditionally cater to "expats", which is a fancy British word for high income white collar professionals/digital nomads who either travel frequently or have foreign residencies for business. Your Premier status is global; you can easily create accounts at overseas branches with the same Premier privileges and (possibly credit history transfer too) and fund transfers between accounts are free, though I believe their conversion rates are not necessarily as competitive as a proper brokerage like Interactive Brokers. HSBC's premier service has been around long before the likes of Transferwise.

HSBC operates a bit like a franchise, each country's branch has to abide by domestic regulations but internally customers with Premier status are basically VIPs and get expedited during account opening at overseas branches. If I remember correctly, they generally take into account all of your assets with the bank including e.g. loans and mortgages etc. when banking. They don't only look at your cash assets when conferring Premier status. So if you have a house or car loan with them you can easily attain Premier.

> they also traditionally cater to "expats", which is a fancy British word for high income white collar professionals/digital nomads who either travel frequently or have foreign residencies for business.

"Expats" is also used for elderly retirees moving to the Costa Del Sol, so IME it's not a particularly high-income or white-collar term.

Now, if you were talking about "non-doms" that would be a different matter :)

Of course, I agree that a bank accustomed to dealing with expatriates would probably be understanding of someone spending a lot of time in another country.

"non-doms" are rich foreigners in England (and the very rare Englishman who hasnt yet had the taxman rule on their attempt to pretend they are no longer English), immigrants are poor/average foreigners in England.

Expats are all English when they are outside the UK - be they retired in Spain or living / working in Dubai / Asia / Australia.

Private banking can be easier in other countries, so long as you're not a US citizen. e.g. New Zealanders https://www.anz.co.nz/personal/private-bank/

  high net worth New Zealanders from a diverse range of backgrounds. Typically our clients have at least $1.5 million to invest, or significant lending with a personal annual income of $400,000 or more. *Additional income criteria may apply

I travel overseas a lot to Europe and Asia anywhere from a few weeks to almost a year. I VPN, but not always back to the US. I use wise.com. I kept my US address.

I’ve had zero problems. I think we’re all getting excited about anecdotes.

Indeed. As someone who lived overseas I knew plenty of people who maintained US accounts and US credit cards. The only time an issue ever came up is if they told the bank they no longer lived in the US. Then boom account closure.

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