A major international relocation involves a tax adviser, an immigration lawyer and a property purchase — and most of the guidance available focuses on those three. What is systematically under-discussed is the practical infrastructure that needs to be in place before and during the move: how you move significant sums of money across currencies without losing meaninglessly to bank spreads, how you maintain health coverage during the gap between residencies, how your banking continues to function when your address changes, and how you actually find and verify the right property. These are the categories where poor preparation costs real money rather than theoretical tax efficiency. For the wider step-by-step view, our relocation checklist for the first 90 days picks up where this page ends.
The sequence that matters
Currency: the most consistently mishandled part
A family relocating from the UK to Portugal, Italy or Spain with a property purchase of £800,000 will typically transfer between £500,000 and £1,000,000 in the year of relocation — the property purchase, the initial living costs, the setup costs. At a high-street bank’s exchange rate, the spread cost on that volume of transfers is £15,000–30,000. With a specialist currency broker, it is £3,000–6,000. The saving is not marginal.
The three services worth establishing: Wise for day-to-day transfers and holding balances in multiple currencies; OFX or TorFX for the large one-off property purchase (both offer dedicated dealer relationships for transactions above £50,000); and a forward contract arrangement for ongoing monthly costs if you have clear visibility on your regular transfer amounts. A forward contract locks in an exchange rate for future transfers, eliminating the risk of an adverse rate movement affecting your monthly budget in the months after a move when cash flow is already strained. These are neutral recommendations rather than affiliate placements — the point is the structure, not the brand, and any regulated broker offering dealer service and forward contracts will do the job.
International health insurance: the gap that catches people out
The health coverage gap during an international relocation is both predictable and consistently underestimated. UK private medical insurance policies — Bupa, AXA Health, Vitality — are typically structured for UK residents. When you establish foreign residency, your insurer may require notification and may change your terms, premium or covered territory. Your UK NHS entitlement effectively ends when you stop being ordinarily resident in the UK.
In your destination country, you typically cannot access the public healthcare system until you have completed residency registration — which in Portugal, Spain and Italy can take several months after arrival. Private healthcare is available in all of these destinations without residency, but at point-of-use rates that are significantly higher than insured rates.
SafetyWing Remote Health provides a global health subscription that covers residents across 175+ countries and can be arranged before departure — which makes it well suited to bridging the registration gap specifically, because cover starts immediately rather than after a domestic underwriting cycle. Cigna Global and AXA Global Healthcare offer more traditional annual international health insurance products with comprehensive cover, higher premiums and more established claims networks — appropriate for families or individuals with complex health needs who want the most comprehensive cover available rather than the most flexible.
Why the choice deserves real time: international health insurance premiums for a family typically range from £3,000 to £12,000 per year depending on coverage level, age and territory. Unlike a once-off trip insurance premium, this is a recurring annual commitment. Choosing the right product and provider at the point of relocation matters — switching international health insurers later involves underwriting a new policy, which may exclude any pre-existing conditions that developed during the previous policy period. The cover you start with tends to become the cover you keep.
Close the coverage gap before you fly
SafetyWing Remote Health can be arranged before departure and begins immediately — the simplest way to bridge the months between leaving the NHS and completing residency registration abroad.
Arrange health coverage →International banking: open it while you still can
The practicalities of banking during an international relocation are overlooked until they become urgent. When you change your address to a foreign country, your UK bank may restrict your account, require your account to be transferred to an international division, or in some cases close it. Your new destination’s banks will require proof of local address and residency before opening an account — which you cannot provide until after you have arrived and registered.
Opening an HSBC Expat account, a Lloyds International account or a Starling personal account before departure provides a bridge: an account that is designed for internationally mobile individuals, accepts multi-currency holdings, and does not require a domestic address. These accounts become significantly harder to open once your UK address has changed — the documentation and income verification requirements become more complex. Open them while your UK documentation is current.
Tax numbers and registration: the sequence nobody explains
The single most common cause of delay in the first weeks abroad is the humble tax number. Almost nothing functional happens without one: you cannot complete a property purchase, open a resident bank account, sign a utility contract or, in many cases, a long-term lease until you hold the local taxpayer identification — the NIF in Portugal, the NIE in Spain, the codice fiscale in Italy. It is the master key to the entire system, and it gates everything downstream of it.
The mistake is treating it as something to sort out after arrival. In several countries the number can be obtained in advance — through the destination’s consulate in the UK, or via a local lawyer or fiscal representative acting under power of attorney — weeks before you land. Doing so collapses the dead time on arrival, because the resident bank account, the utility contracts and the property completion can all proceed the moment you are on the ground rather than waiting in a queue for an appointment. Sequence it early, ideally alongside the banking step, and the first fortnight abroad stops being a bureaucratic standstill.
Property: viewing, verifying, and not buying the wrong thing
Buying property in an unfamiliar market is where the largest single sums move and where local knowledge is least transferable. The discipline that protects you is independence: instruct a lawyer who acts for you alone and not for the seller or the agent, verify that the title is clean and that any licences (habitation, in particular) are in order, and treat the first property you fall for with the same scepticism as the tenth. Most serious buyers make several trips before committing — one to orient, one or two to shortlist, one to transact — and renting in the chosen area for a season before buying is, for many, the best money spent in the whole process. Our guide to villa rentals during a property-viewing trip covers how to base yourself well while you look.
Shipping your belongings is the infrastructure step most people leave until last and most regret rushing. International removals split into two timelines: sea freight, which is far cheaper for a full household but takes weeks and exposes you to customs clearance at the far end, and air freight for the small set of things you cannot be without. Get quotes from movers with an established agent in your destination country specifically, confirm in writing what the receiving-country customs rules require — an inventory, proof of prior ownership, sometimes a residency document — and keep a separately-shipped or hand-carried box of the essentials that make the first fortnight livable. The households that arrive calmly are the ones that decided months earlier what travels by sea, what travels by air, and what does not travel at all.
Getting there: the viewing trips and the move itself
The travel pattern of a relocation is its own small logistics problem. The viewing phase means several round trips on inconvenient regional routings, often with awkward connections to the destination nearest the properties you are seeing; the move itself frequently coincides with a household in transit, school-start deadlines and a completion date you do not fully control. For households relocating on a tight calendar — or to a destination poorly served by direct commercial flights — private charter removes the connection risk and the schedule rigidity from the parts of the move where they cause the most damage. When the dates are immovable and the routing is awkward, it is less an indulgence than a way of protecting the rest of an already strained timetable.
Plan the viewing trips and the move on your schedule
For property-viewing circuits and relocation flights to destinations commercial schedules serve badly, a charter removes the connections and the fixed timetable from the move’s most time-critical days.
Request a private charter quote →What goes wrong — and how to avoid it
The failures cluster in a few predictable places. People leave the currency strategy until the property completion date, then transfer six figures at a high-street spread because there is no time to do otherwise. They assume their UK medical cover travels with them, and discover the gap only when they need treatment in the registration limbo. They change their address before opening international banking, and find the documentation requirements have hardened against them. They arrive without a tax number and lose the first three weeks to appointment queues. And they buy the first property that charms them, using the seller’s recommended lawyer, without independent verification of the title.
None of these are exotic problems. Each is the direct result of sequencing the infrastructure after the headline decisions of tax and visa, rather than alongside them. The relocations that go smoothly are not the ones with the cleverest tax structure; they are the ones where the currency, banking, health and registration steps were treated as first-order tasks and booked into the calendar months ahead, in the order set out above. None of it is difficult in isolation; the difficulty is purely one of timing, and timing is the one variable entirely within your control before you leave.
Relocation flights, handled
When the completion date is fixed and the routing is awkward, a private charter is the cleanest way to land your household where it needs to be, on the day it needs to be there.
Plan your relocation flights →Frequently asked questions
How do I transfer large sums abroad for a property purchase?
For property purchases above £50,000, use a specialist currency broker rather than a high-street bank. Services like OFX and TorFX provide a dedicated currency dealer, competitive exchange rates and the ability to fix a forward contract — locking in today’s rate for a transfer that will complete in several weeks when the purchase goes through. The difference between a bank rate and a broker rate on a £500,000 transfer can be £8,000–15,000. Establish the relationship and complete their compliance process before you need the transfer.
Will my UK bank close my account when I move abroad?
It depends on the bank and account type. Many UK banks can accommodate customers with foreign addresses, particularly in the EU, but some will require your account to be restructured or transferred. Contact your bank before changing your address rather than after. The safest approach is to open an international bank account before your address changes, so you have a functioning account regardless of what your UK bank decides to do.
When should I get a NIF, NIE or codice fiscale?
As early as possible, and ideally before you arrive. The local tax number — NIF in Portugal, NIE in Spain, codice fiscale in Italy — gates nearly everything practical: the resident bank account, utility contracts, long-term leases and property completion all require it. In several countries it can be obtained in advance through the destination’s consulate in the UK, or via a local lawyer or fiscal representative acting under power of attorney. Securing it before arrival collapses the dead time in your first weeks, because the downstream steps can then proceed immediately.
How long does it take to get a local bank account in Portugal, Italy or Spain?
Opening a local bank account in Portugal, Italy or Spain typically requires proof of local address and a local tax number (NIF in Portugal, codice fiscale in Italy, NIE in Spain). Obtaining the tax number can be done in advance in some cases through the respective country’s consulate in the UK. The bank account itself typically takes one to three weeks once you have the required documentation. Do not plan to fund day-to-day living costs through your local account on arrival — you will need an international account in the interim.
What documents do I need to open an HSBC Expat account?
HSBC Expat typically requires proof of identity, proof of current address, proof of source of wealth (employment history, investment statements or property ownership documents) and a minimum opening balance. The specific requirements vary and can be confirmed directly with HSBC Expat. The key point is that these requirements are more straightforward to satisfy while you are still at your UK address, before the complications of a foreign address create additional documentation requirements.
Can I keep my international health insurance once I have local residency?
Usually yes — international health products such as SafetyWing Remote Health, Cigna Global and AXA Global Healthcare are designed to continue across countries of residence rather than expire on registration. The reason to choose carefully at the outset is continuity: switching insurer later means fresh underwriting, and any condition that arose while you were on the first policy may be treated as pre-existing and excluded by the next. For most relocatees the practical move is to start cover before departure and keep the same policy running, rather than swapping to a local product the moment public healthcare becomes available.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, legal or immigration advice. Service availability, account requirements and regulations change. Always verify current terms with the relevant providers and seek professional advice for your specific circumstances.