All You Need to Know to Choose the Top Offshore Bank Account That's Right for You

Jersey and the Isle of Man offer a huge array of offshore banking and offshore saving accounts that enable you to manage your tax affairs a good deal more simply if you are eligable to bank offshore. All the major UK high street banks and building societies are represented and there are one or two interesting names as yet unknown on the UK high streets that deserve a mention too. Jersey and the Isle of Man offer the security of being well regulated financial environments, the convenience of being part of the UK clearing system which means that for sterling payments at least, the BACS payment system can generally be used for moving funds around, keeping bank charges to a minimum, and generally, free. Of course faster payment channels can be used too - like CHAPS and SWIFT.

Accounts may commonly be opened in sterling, US dollars and Euros. In very rare situations these may even be run as multi-currency accounts, though this tends to be more for the current accounts rather than saving accounts. The interest rates on offer, seem to vary quite widely. For example, the best sterling savings accounts on offer from Bradford and Bingley International and the Alliance and Leicester pay 6.35 and 6.40% respectively on a minimum balance of £1k without imposing any significant time or fee restrictions on withdrawls, though these top paying accounts are 'linked' accounts and money can only be transferred out of them into another account in your name. This compares with the top sterling accounts from HSBC and Barclays International paying 5.45% AER (5.75% AER for premier accts) and 6.05% AER respectively, with HSBC and Barclays requiring a minimum balance of £10K.

Looking at options for US dollar saving accounts, the headline rate of 5.04% AER for the International Tracker Savings Account from Barclays on a minimum balance of U$20k compares with 4.96% AER from HSBC for their online saver account. Bradford and Bingley International offer tiered interest on their US dollar account starting at 4.75% on balances of U$10-49.9k and the Alliance and Leicester 5.2% AER on a minimum balance of U$5k for their US dollar savings account. If you can manage to keep your withdrawls to a minimum, Bank of Scotland International have a US dollar account called the Guaranteed Saver that offers 5.5% AER on a minimum balance of U$50k and a restriction of 4 free withdrawls a year.

Finally, looking at Euro offshore bank accounts, the Bank of Scotland International offers 4.25% on a minimum balance of 35k Euroson their Euro Guaranteed Saver saving account, HSBC offer 3.6% on a minimum €20k balance, the Alliance and Leicester International offer 3.86% on a minimum balance of €5k, Bradford and Bingley International offer 3.75% tiered, on balances of €10-49.9k and Barclays offer 2.45% tiered on €15-75k.

The other high street players worth considering are The Royal Bank of Scotland who have an interesting multi currency account, Royalties International for an annual fee of £150, Lloyds TSB whose sterling offshore current account costs just £7.50 per month, Abbey International whose sterling Call account is a useful fee free option, particularly if you are looking for a linked account with an offshore bank that clears its own funds (which is necessary for linking with the BBI esaver account for example) and finally, the wildcard Lansbanki Guernsey, part of Landsbanki, Iceland's largest financial institution that is currently marketing aggressively for new customers and offers a headline rate of 6.5% on its sterling 2 year fixed rate bonds.