Category: Economics, Finance, and Political Economy

–Q: “Curt: What international banks do you recommend?”–

My favorite international bank is HSBC(Hong Kong/London). Great service. Great access. Everything works like clockwork. 😉
My favorite private bank is Schwab(USA) but they’ve been acquired and their balance sheet was fuzzy, but I see it’s improved.
My favorite personal bank is Swiss and I won’t name it, but all small Swiss banks are about the same if you give them at least 500k USD.
I don’t use Panamanian or “Island” banks because I have no need to engage in hiding assets, but I’m quite knowledgeable of how to do so and have helped quite a few people do so – though it’s so much easier than just ten years ago it doesn’t require special knowledge or skill.
My favorite consumer bank in North America is TDBank (Canada). They have the best customer service by far.
My favorite Eastern European bank Raiffeisen Bank Aval (Austria) has been troubled by the UA/RU conflict but despite the bureaucratic procedures, they manage to get your international banking done.
I used to use both Ukrainian (PrivatBank) and Russian (Alfa-Bank) banks, and in particular I enjoyed great customer service from PrivatBank.
I have a particular aversion to keeping capital in the large American banks because whey they are highly stable, they are arms of the state, and the government has demonstrated third-world irresponsibility by denying juridical defense in financial matters, with president Obama doing some of the worst prosecutions of innocent financial transactions in history, and stressing non-US banks to help him.
As for private banking (wealthy folk) I had bad experiences with one the big fellows I won’t name. Why? There is a sort of middle-weight trap in private banking where you have enough to be a customer, but not enough to matter enough so to speak. 😉 So for example my ability to ‘influence’ large banks as a CEO of a large corporation was not the same as an individual.
Why these differences? The customer service differs based on what kind of business you’re in. And I was involved in many ‘complexities’ between the different businesses, countries, and especially when it came to intelligence work.