This is generally a good advice, as a bank typically has your money and lose nothing being slow or painful.

On moving to foreign countries while keeping banking access, it's such a world of hurt.

Some banks will straight stop your account and flag it the minute they understand you've been out of the country for any specific length of time (from 1 full month to 6 months depending on the bank). Many banks will just not allow a foreign resident to keep an account.

Citibank in Japan has the funniest rule: you have to receive in person a letter sent to your residency address every month if you intend to keep your account alive. Failing to do so for whatever reason automatically locks the account and you have to come to them to prove you still meet their requirements.

While this is annoying and is excessive to what's required in law (it must be done at least yearly, and most banks do not try to annoy foreign residents more than what's legally required), Japan does require all Japanese-domiciled bank that they verify that the owner is either a Japanese national or a long-term resident in Japan. In fact, most Asian countries do have a "must be a citizen or resident" or even the much more stricter "must be a resident" requirement.

At least it's not India, according to Mastercard and Visa India even prohibits foreign long-term residents from maintaining an account in their country of nationality (and therefore we must always certify that upon our knowledge we do not send cards, even debit, to India).

That is very, very excessive... Do you know what the official reasoning is for that?

Also, since that some may just scratch their head, here is the relevant provision from MasterCard (https://www.mastercard.us/content/dam/public/mastercardcom/n...).

It's the same in most countries. The regulatory burden may be different but banking presence is required in the country if you are serving domestic market at scale.

Indian residents can open HSBC expat account domiciled on the jersey island as an example.

It's the default regardless of the country unless you are sanctioned.

It's a factor but only a single one among multiple others.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/citi-agrees-sell-japan-retail...

That's the explaination I got when I discussed opening an account there. To note I wasn't a permanent resident, which might have set different conditions.

Went with Mitsubishi, and they were just fine.

(In Canada at least, mail can be set for "no forwarding", so the post office won't redirect in said cases.)

File a complaint with their regulator and let them know you have.

I did contact a regulator body once I got access to my account

1. It was difficult to use unless native

2. They're basically doing mediation, will ask feedback from me and the bank and end with the bank follow their "procedures" so my problem for "being away"

Anyway, now I'll make sure to have multiple bank accounts across multiple jurisdictions

You are never 100% safe. You could be killed by a car, a falling plane or a meteorite an hour from now. Or an artillery shell or nuke just after the start of an unexpected war. Or that painful spot that you have could turn out to be terminal cancer, which could kill you within 3 months.

Also any currency and any set of stocks can go to near-zero faster than most imagine. A natural disaster can happen that simultaneously wipes out your house (if you have one) and your insurance company. (This is actually the reason I'm insuring my house with the same company that holds my mortgage, so at least I don't have to pay the mortgage if they're wiped out in such an event.)

The real question is how much risk are you willing to accept, and what costs are you willing to pay to mitigate the risks. And of the above, I think the main risk driver was to go abroad (paired with being unlucky about covid's timing).

Going abroad while depending on a domestic bank with a log-in method that would soon expire was adding to the risk.

The combination of the above put you into a small subset of the population, meaning you and people like you didn't have leverage when the disaster struck.

But you _were_ unlucky. And if luck is bad enough, you're never completely safe.

It wasn't luck. It was someone's decision making that he was subject to with no recourse.

How exactly do you think this would work? What jurisdiction is all this in?

So basically my idea is that to have some of my assets (insurance and some savings) with the same company that holds the mortgage, I have a hedge against the credit risk associated with my assets. If the bank goes bankrupt and cannot repay its obligations to me, I can refuse to pay my mortgage back to them, and demand that any net asset the bank would owe me would be subtracted from the liability I have with the bank.

If my assets were in another company, and that company were unable to pay, I would still be stuck with the mortgage, potentially even if the value of the property were to be lost.

As a side not, I remember working on a credit risk (Basel 2) project back in 2005-2006. Until then, inter-bank lending was (by regulators) considered to have zero-none credit risk, but from around that time, banks (at least in Europe) had to allocate regulatory capital when lending to each other. Then came 2008.

I like this logic.

My only concern would be that, in many cases an insurer might have a clause to pay cash or rebuild, their choice. Or some other conflict which may cause issue with the mortgage holder (many mortgages can force sale in certain circumstances).

But I like your premise, and will poke at it here.

stocks are also diversified (different segments of the economy and geographies)

but yeah, unlucky at that time!

Under normal circumstances, would be easy to fly back within 3 months

There is also problem with deposit insurance. In EU deposit in single bank is insured upto 100k euro. If bank bankrupts, you loose anything over that. So it is better to spread deposits across multiple banks, each with 100k euro deposit.

And by aware that many banks are owned by the same group, and use just different brand as front. Insurance is per bank license, not per bank brand.

There is also Cypriot bail in in 2013...

Not that it makes a difference, I see their facebook page have 1.6 stars