Second time round

Absa Bank has launched a series of products aimed at South Africans who have chosen either to travel or work in the UK.

The newly acquired bank products include an international banking facility and two linked endowment products.

Readers will recall that Absa announced a similar international banking product in the Winter of 2004, with the partner being the Royal Bank of Scotland International (RBSI).

According to Absa Private Bank the deal with the RBSI was suspended when the talks with Barclays were announced.

And while ithas also emerged that the RBSI product was taken up by several hundred clients, according to Absa Private bank there areno plans to aggressively target that client base, as the bank has access to more than 200 000 potential clients within Absa Private Bank and PFS, which they will target.

The banking offering will be subject to local FICA processes and the Know Your Client (KYC) requirements in the UK. And if clients have been FICA’ed via the bank, then the process will take a couple of days.

This offering obviously becomes a huge opportunity for all that declared amnesty money.

* now for a little trivia - did you know that between 25% and 35% of chartered accountants work outside of South Africa.