Leaving
Closing accounts is harder than opening them and needs an address you no longer have
Institutions are built to acquire customers and reluctant to release them, and almost every closing process assumes you are still in the country with a working local address and phone.
By Sofia Almeida3 min read
Asymmetric processes
Opening an account of any kind is designed to be easy, because the institution wants you. Closing one is designed by nobody in particular, and the result is a process that is slower, more manual and much more likely to require something you are about to lose: a local address, a local phone number, a branch visit, or a signature on paper.
This asymmetry is the reason closing down a life somewhere takes longer than setting it up. Nothing about it is difficult in itself. It is that every step assumes a presence you are in the act of removing.
The practical consequence is that closures should start well before departure and be sequenced so that the things you need to close other things are the last to go.
Order of operations
Work out which of your local arrangements depend on which. The bank account is usually needed to settle final bills, so it closes late. The phone number is often needed to authorise the bank, so it closes later still, or is kept alive on a minimal prepaid basis for a while afterwards.
The address is the awkward one, because it disappears on a fixed date whether or not everything else is finished. Where you can, arrange somewhere that will receive post for a period — a friend, a colleague, a paid forwarding service — and update institutions to it before the tenancy ends rather than after.
Draw the list once, on paper, and work through it. Everything with a recurring payment, everything with a login, everything that has ever sent you a letter. It is longer than you expect, and the items you forget are the ones that generate problems. A year of bank statements is the fastest way to build it, because anything charging you money appears there whether or not you remember signing up for it.
The accounts that fight back
Subscriptions and utility contracts are the usual difficulty, because many have minimum terms and cancellation windows that do not care about your departure. Some countries treat a move abroad as a valid reason for early termination and require evidence of it; others do not. Check the terms before assuming either way.
Gym memberships, insurance policies, mobile contracts and streaming services with local billing all belong on the list. So does anything that renews annually and might quietly take a payment months after you have gone.
Where a contract cannot be ended, find out whether it can be transferred to someone else, which is often possible and rarely advertised. A colleague inheriting a broadband contract is a good outcome for everybody.
Do not close the bank account first
The instinct at the end is to shut the bank account as a symbolic final act, and it is precisely the wrong order. Final bills arrive late, deposits are returned weeks afterwards, and a refund that cannot be received is a refund you do not get.
Keep the account open until the last known obligation has settled, then leave it a little longer, then close it deliberately and obtain written confirmation. Where the bank permits non-resident accounts, keeping one open for a period after departure is often the simplest solution to the entire problem.
If you must close it early, make sure every counterparty who might owe you money has an alternative destination for it, and that everything with a direct debit has been cancelled at the source rather than merely at the bank.
Written confirmation, and keeping the file
Ask for written confirmation of every closure, and keep it. Accounts that were supposedly closed have a habit of generating charges, and the record of the closure is what ends the conversation quickly rather than slowly and from a different time zone.
Keep the whole file for several years: closure confirmations, final bills, tenancy correspondence, tax filings, and your record of what existed in the first place. If you ever return, or if any authority in that country has a question, the file answers it.
And leave a way to be reached. An email address that will not lapse, an address that will forward, a phone number that stays alive for a while. Most of the trouble people have after leaving a country comes from being uncontactable at the moment somebody was trying to send them something.
Common questions
Should I keep a local bank account after leaving?
Where the bank permits it for non-residents, it can be useful for settling late bills and receiving refunds, and it makes a return simpler. Tell them where you now live, since holding an account against an old address creates a compliance problem, and check any reporting obligation in your new country.
What if a contract will not let me cancel?
Check whether local law provides for termination on a move abroad, since some countries do with evidence. Failing that, ask about transferring it to somebody else, and get any agreement in writing rather than relying on an assurance by telephone.
How long should I keep the old phone number?
Until everything that uses it for authentication has been changed or closed, which usually means some months after departure. A minimal prepaid arrangement is cheap insurance against being locked out of an account you still need.
Staff writer, Globetrotter Talks
Sofia joined to cover arriving, visas & paperwork, money abroad and stayed for the awkward questions and prefers a plain explanation to a clever one.
