Non-Resident Canadian and HSBC banking

One option is to have your pay deposited in a local Saudi bank in SAR then transfer to wherever you want you money to reside. It can be a challenge to get your pay sent to a bank other than your passport/payroll country.

I am non-resident Canadian as well and am also with TD/Can Trust, back home. You may want to set up a Saudi bak account eventually but don't close your TD bank account and do bring two or three bank-stamped direct deposit forms for Payroll. Take it into Payroll in person, no matter whether Houston supposedly already sent it to Aramco payroll in the Kingdom. This should be done well before the payroll cutoff, which is about the 19th of each month.

It is a major hassle to transfer money from your Saudi account to your Canadian/TD account - three days for a transfer. And you can't open a Saudi bank account or transfer cash or exchange riyals/cash for dollars until you have your iqama and can open the local account. PS The Saudi bank in Dharan by the commissary will cash your personal cheques from your home bank, no questions asked, just by showing your Aramco i.d. Max 2000 riyals per week. Very, very casual, indeed.*I guess they know where to find you if your home cheque doesn't clear!

The weekly limit ohcanada is talking about is for cashing checks. When using an ATM you are limited to the daily amount set by your bank (I think SR1500 per day is the norm), but you can get that amount out every day of the week if you want.

I'm also a TD customer and went into the bank to discuss this. They indicated that they can simply change the account details in their system to reflect our Saudi Arabia address when the time comes. We will have the same account number so no issues with salary deposits etc and our cheques will still be good even though the address will be wrong on the ones we currently have.

It is a little complicated for the bank employee to do the conversion as they also have to adjust the tax code to reflect a 25% withholding tax the bank remits to the Canadian govt on any interest earned in the account. Therefore it might be better to get a more senior employee to help you. My TD rep was great and contacted head office while I was there to get detailed procedures.

At some point we probably will open a non resident account with a brokee firm or multinational bank with operations in the Middle East. I know CitiBank operate out of Bahrain and I think The Bank Of Nova Scotia also operate an Etrade branch out Dubai. The other banks probably have some sort of presence in the GCC as well but I'm not sure as I haven't done the research on that.

You can have your pay check deposited in a bank here, but it will be converted to Saudi Riyals.

mac,

My understanding is that Aramco can only do direct wire transfer to a bank outside of Saudi Arabia for foreign currencies. You can open a C$ denominated account here but the only way for you to get your salary credited into that account is to opt for a cheque for your salary and manually deposit it into your C$ denominated account. The cheque will take 4-6 weeks to clear .... too much hassle I would think.

Hi,
I'd like to keep my pay inside the kingdom to avoid possibility of being considered as a resident in Canada. Would Aramco give you a choice of direct depositing the salary in the offshore account for Canadians in CAN$? If that is the case, would someone tell me which bank has an offshore account and works best for Canadians?