Validation trip and opening a bank account

[sforbes]

Hi there

Just testing the waters here.....has anyone opened a bank account prior to their validation trip and picked up their cards etc when in Oz on your reccie/validation trip.

I'm not sure if you are allowed to do this...but I can't see anywhere that mentions that you can't!!

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks, Sharon

[Dave & Carole]

Yes you can.

We used The Commmonwealth Bank & they were fantastic. You can open up your account via the London branch - which you can also use to exchnage money across , getting bank exchange rates. Before we left the UK we then orgainised a meeting at the bank for when we arrived - cards all ready & waiting. Would def reccommend them.

[ian mc]

We opened an account a long time before we came done it by letter and phone then no emails in those days

[Cerberus1]

Hi Sharon
I checked with the head the migrant banking at nab a couple of weeks ago about this and there's no problem at all with collecting your cards on a reccie/validation trip

[foxychick]

We opened ours with ANZ before we arrived, went into an account when we arrived, no dramas. Good thing to doing this, if you have some money and the exchange rate is good, you can take advantage and change it over.

[sforbes]

Thanks for all your posts. That's another thing crossed off the list.

I'm going to get onto that this weekend.

Thanks all