Any advice on this?

My parents would like to open a UK bank account for my children who live in Sweden with us. They’ve been trying via the Halifax but are having no success due to money laundering paperwork issues.

Any more friendlier banks out there?

Shouldn’t be a problem. I’ve opened bank accounts for my kids in their names, but my wife and I control it. No reason why you couldn’t set up the same with your parents in control.

The issues seem to come from the fact that my children reside overseas.

With most banks, you have to be a UK resident to open an account in the UK.

My parents are UK residents, my children are not. There’s no tax or legal reason why it should be an issue but the banks see this as poor return business so just don’t bother.

As your kids are not UK residents then they won’t open an account for you if they’re named on it.
It’s probably the FSA that put those rules in place, not the banks.

My parents are UK residents, my children are not.

I thought one had to be a resident in a country to get a bank account. Can your folks not just use something like TransferWise to send money to a Swedish account that you set up in the kids’ name? Is there a particular reason your parents want to open a UK account?

Or set a UK one up and pass all the log ins across.

There’s nothing stopping a wire transfer to a Swedish child’s saving account, apart from the fee incurred each time.

However there is no tax or legal reasons why it shouldn’t be possible to open an account in the UK for them however as stated the amount of paperwork required due to money laundering checks is so prohibitive that it seems banks won’t do it.

Do your kids have UK passports?

There’s nothing stopping a wire transfer to a Swedish child’s saving account, apart from the fee incurred each time.[\quote]

It’s around £5 fee for £1000. As I asked earlier, is there an imperative for having a UK account?

Get the parents to pretend children live with them, at least until the accounts are opened.

There’s nothing like trying to circumvent money laundering regulations. 🙂