Kaupthing Singer and Freidlander

Unable to open even one UK mainland bank account we finally took the decision to transfer our money to Australia. Having paper cheques in the house was nerve wracking as well as daft. So I opened an account with Ozforex, a Money exchange company, and started looking for the best/safest way to transfer our savings. It quickly became clear that I had to have a Sterling account to be able to transfer the money from. So the search started again.
After much searching and making enquiries it turned out that I’d have to open an ‘Offshore’ bank account. A couple of the UK banks had suggested this but I’d always considered offshore banking as a little shady and used by the wealthy to perhaps hide some of their moneys. But after a load more research (and money starting to run very low in Australia – all this had meant I’d not been able to go and find a decent work position here yet) I finally plumped on a bank called Kaupthing Singer and Friedlander on the Isle of Man.

Kaupthing Singer and Freidlander (or KSF as i'll now call it) had good credit ratings, didn’t appear to be caught up in the flow of lending to people who would never be able to repay and had a Parenteral Guarantee to cover all monies if the worst should happen. The Isle of Man had a 'Depositor Compensation Scheme' but the BCCI collapse (where folk who lost money in that were still receiving the odd £10 cheque years later!) showed that to be more sound-bite than a real safety net. No, the money would be there a very short time and the credit ratings and guarantee were good enough for me.

In mid September 2008, I opened a current account with KSF and, using the securest - and costliest! – postal method I could find, sent the cheques to KSF) . As soon as they cleared and the money was available I would exchange the money and bring it to my Australian account before spreading it around a bit here. I was a little nervous at having ALL our money in one place, but it would be for a very short time and we would be very unlucky indeed if the bank went bust as there were no signs whatsoever! Not quite so for its UK sister bank, but that was an entirely different business.