Bank account to receive BHD salary

I can't comment on transfers to GBP and what would be the best rate - but if you are working for a local company here, they would need a local currency account to transfer money in.

TGV123 wrote:

As a new expat living & working in Bahrain, from UK, is it necessary or advisable to open a local bank account?

My concern is the cost/rates of then transferring back to UK in GBP.

Seen other helpful threads re. using offshore accounts & expat accounts, but these appear to require some high minimum deposits and/or earnings which are not appropriate for myself & my wife.

Would an account, such as Moneycorp or Wise (?) be a potential substitute for that?
Could get paid local salary, with rates competitive for transferring earnings to GBP in UK.
But perhaps I'm missing something?

Appreciate any thoughts,
Paul

Dear Paul,

I can advise you how my Staff from Britain transfers money to the UK. They have a local  BHD account in Standard Chartered Bank. Then initiates a SWIFT Transfer to the UK. Once I enquired with them, they advised me that they offer good rates and the head was based in the UK.

This was before  2 years. It's better to check with them first about the exchange rates and Swift Transfer fees.

You can open a GBP account with ILA Bank and MEEM account and directly transfer it to the UK with just the swift charges.

Kind Regards,
Neemish

I missed part of your post.   As I said, I can't comment on other solutions as I never needed to use them (and when I looked at them, they were too expensive vs. my current situation) but yes offshore accounts would offer you the best option.  And it's not true that all of them have high balance requirements.  Lloyds is one which doesn't have a requirement but the downside is the monthly maintenance fees.  I think I wrote a bit about offshore banks here:

https://www.expat.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=885444

In my case I pay zero fees because my routes are usually:

Hsbc premier Bahrain to Citibank gold  Bahrain in BHD.  Citigold Bahrain to Citigold Singapore in USD or GBP.  Citigold Singapore GBP to Lloyds GBP or HSBC Expat channel Islands in GBP. Zero fees at any step and pretty much the best rates due to premier account status at each step.  I have also have standard chartered priority accounts in Bahrain, Singapore and London but I wouldn't advise using them.... Poor service and silly fees e.g. to receive money at times, even if your account is priority.  I literally only keep SCB for the trading account to diversify vs. My other broker i.e. IBKR.

You can't avoid fees altogether i.e. swift, correspondent bank etc. if you originate the transfer from Bahrain directly to the UK.  Also be aware that for GBP, the rate will vary more for local banks vs. International banks as the international banks can resort to internal treasury desk vs. Local banks needing to buy through deals.  The rate will never be good enough to compare vs private banking clients but it won't be that far off. If you don't transfer huge amounts, it shouldn't matter that much to you I guess.