Is there much international banking in Sydney?

[smits]

I'm looking to move some money to a bank in Sydney, and I'm hoping to find a bank that operates both there and in the UK and then move my money within the same bank. Can anyone tell me if Sydney has a lot of big international banks (like Royal Bank of Scotland or HSBC)?

[Simon_Hilton]

I looked into this years ago when moving to the UK and at the time all banks operated as largely seperate entities so there was no benefit in going with the same bank in each country. You still had to move money through their trading desk at a much worse rate than going with a good forex trader. We ended up using World first to move our money.

[Todd_Heslin]

As Simon said, they all operate independently unless you have private banking. Go with any account that has a cheap monthly fee and use TransferWise to make the funds transfer. They are wicked cheap especially for GBP to and from AUD.

If you are planning to close your UK accounts then go with a bank with super low foreign cash-out fees using your Australian debit card. I use Citibank Plus which is pretty awesome for this (but sucks for customer service).

[David_Arnold]

I think HSBC is the best option, but it does require a reasonably high balance to get started.
You can have both GBP and AUD (and other) denominated accounts, and transferring is very convenient (if not cheap).