Banking

Before you depart to UK, you will have to prepare bank draft for your expenses in UK (pay to your own name) , and also another piece with your university tuition fees (pay to university).

After you arrive in the UK, university will give you a letter in order to open banking account in UK local bank like:

-- Natwest

-- Santander

So, before you get the letter, open a account in the bank and credit your bank draft, you might need cash i hand for daily use. so you should prepare some cash on hand, around £300 will be good and also as a financial prove to UK custom in case they request the inspection on the financial prove.

Additional:

As HSBC is available in UK, so you can open a HSBC account in Malaysia. You can use it for 2ways ---

• Place all your money in HSBC, withdraw at HSBC ATM when you need money. Under this situation, you do not have to prepare your own living expenses bank draft. But there will be chargers everytime you withdraw money, and the currency convert will be base on the daily currency rates of HSBC bank.

• Spare the HSBC account for emergency. Like if you finish your money from the bank draft you brought over to UK, your parents can credit money into your HSBC account in Malaysia with any HSBS cash debit machine. It will only take one day to process. Its really more convenient for money transfer between Malaysia and UK compared to Telegraph Transfer (TT) from Malaysia Bank to UK local bank (eg: Public Bank to Natwest) .

* 2 things to remember: Activate your online banking when you're still in Malaysia to obtain your bank account number. Once you first time activate your ATM, use English as major language as UK's ATM machine does not provide Chinese as language choice. 

* If you worry to forget your ATM card and online banking passwords, please bring along your parents to open the bank account together, so that they are authorized to make any changes to the account from Malaysia as you cannot make any changed on your account through UK's HSBC bank.