a good number have… elsie researched it and could only find one - HSBC and JohnBoy has confirmed it.
Surely in the event, there is truth in what has been said in this topic so hardly doomsayers just suggesting it…
The risk exists and a contingency should be considered, no?
You are making a false statement.
I did not do an exhaustive search. I just checked one basic account for each of half a dozen of the major banks/building societies. Most of them have several different accounts and they could have different conditions.
The two pages of the Banks incorporated in the United Kingdom list I mentioned earlier has over 150 banks.
Once upon a time Travelex would act as a broker to open HSBC accounts for non UK nationals. You just had to pay their fee, sign a contract etc for them to act your behalf… I don’t know if they still offer this service. It could be worth looking into.
then you don’t admit to saying this 
Surely that required a bit of research to draw that conclusion or was it just a knee-jerk reaction and not factually based, therefore misleading 
Perhaps best not to rely on information from you in future to save embarrassment all round?
Lesson learnt.
@graham
You seem to like taking quotes out of context.
Didn’t you not bother to read:
Perhaps best not to rely on information from you in future to save embarrassment all round?
Lesson learnt.
I reckon the heat is getting to all of us, one way or another…
might be time for a cool shower (I wish)
yes, conveniently added by you later to justify your position but, of course, after the original statement which I quoted
If you have a complaint about my posts, take it up with the Team… I’m muting you from now on and will therefore totally ignore you as I find your tone unacceptable and your information unreliable.
Sorry, I’ve realised I gave some more unreliable information and ought to correct it so I don’t give further irritation to some?
I shouldn’t have said the Bank of England list included the names of 150 banks. I didn’t count them manually one let alone several times to verify. All I did was convert the PDF to text and cut-and-paste the columns into LibreOffice. I failed to check the list contents in the text file was the same as in the PDF. I also failed to check the spreadsheet had the same content as the text file; I might have forgotten to paste some or pasted some twice. I just used the number of completed rows (I didn’t even sort the spreadsheet to eliminate any blank lines). So, to provide the level of reliability that seems to be required, rather than 150 banks I should have probably have written something like 100±50 banks?
But I’m not going to bother to determine the exact figure. I assume someone is busy checking all to determine how many of those banks do accept opening an account without a UK address in order to prove the extrapolation from the limited analysis I did was unreliable information?
To make the results of the analysis more useful to those here, I hope that person takes that set of results and of sets containing definitive lists of banks accepted by the UK Pension Service and the NS&I result in one or two intersection sets containing names of banks that accept opening an account without a UK address?
Or perhaps I am just day-dreaming?
Yes. 
Surely many of those 150 banks are commercial / overseas with a small UK presence / etc/etc
I’d be astonished if there are more than about 30 reputable banks that target the retail sector.
Anyone else remember BCCI?
My brain won’t get much further than … Barclays, Lloyds, TSB, National Provincial, Westminster, Midland … and some of those no longer exist…
This wiki page link gives a list of the fifteen UK banks which provide retail services to the general public. And further down there are a few more banks owned by retailers
Building societies are listed on Building society - Wikipedia but only the Nationwide provides current account UK wide
You will find BCCI on
So in fact there are far, far fewer than the 150 banks mentioned above. One would very quickly find that it is almost impossible, as a private individual these days to open a retail bank account without a UK address. It’s one of the reasons we have never closed ours and also why we are very grateful that we do not have all our banking eggs in the same basket.
I have posted previously how difficult I found it to open an account with HSBC even though they advertise they will for non UK residents. I did succeed after 6+ months after jumping through numerous security hoops.
Our daughter who lives in Spain so not UK resident got the same Barclays letter a few weeks ago so started rhe process with HSBC. Like me she hit a brick wall with proof of identity documents.
She happened to attend a wedding last weekend in England and visiting a local HSBC branch on Monday.
She had with her all the reference numbers etc relating to her application. The personal banking checked all the proof of identity and explained that doing the process on line was reliant on computers checking the documents and when the computer says no it spits the paperwork back at you.
Within 20 minutes our daughter was given her account number abd told that her debit card would arrive to Spain within 1 week!
It can be done on line but if you have a UK trip planned anytime soon start the process now and then visit a UK branch, job done.
For those stressing it might well be worth a trip to the UK specifically to open an account with HSBC, good luck.
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It virtually is already, yes, unless you’re very rich then the banks will magically find a way. But for the normal Joe or Josephine Bloggs it is very difficult as the previous options are vanishing as we’ve seen in this thread where so far I think despite a lot of chat we’ve only had one bank, HSBC, who categorically will open accounts for non residents.
That said, other options will become available. Organisations like Clear Bank and Starling are offering use of their tech stacks and banking licences to anyone who will pay for them, Starling is the backend for the new Standard Chartered bank Shoal that launches this year, so there is no reason to think that these new banking options that will emerge will necessarily have the strict criteria and risk adverse nature the big banks have, it may well be worth them doing what Monese has done very successfully; becoming a service for immigrants to the U.K. who can’t get high street bank accounts, but unlike Monese they could perhaps do so with a U.K. banking license if their bread and butter isn’t U.K. citizen residents. It’s a pretty bleak situation today, but I’m not sure it’s permanent.
Also works at the other end of the process. We have been trying to close two accounts with Lloyds - executor accounts that have had nothing in them for 10+ years. We have to go into a branch to do so! Don’t go to UK v often and not wasting time there queuing in a bank
Hence my mention of BCCI. 
Banks that operate at the margins need to be viewed with considerable caution.
Why?
Having worked as a consultant in the financial sector I have seen the smirks, raised eyebrows and shuffling of bottoms in board meetings when something is not quite kosha.
If you don’t remember, read this:
And not a bank, I know but “It’s an Equitable Life Henry”. As the Spectator wrote “Looking back, there is no doubt that Equitable Life represents one of the darkest episodes in the recent history of Britain’s financial services industry.”
If a financial institution is working at the margins there’s usually a reason why.
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How soon we forget the mire and tangled web of financiers…
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I will bow to your superior knowledge in this obviously, but I don’t remember those banks who caused 2008 being at the margins of anything, they were the ones at the very centre, and everything that’s occurred since has been a direct result of the behaviour of those huge banks. We all know that the banks in the centre have no interest other than maximising their profits to the detriment of their customers, that has been shown over and over, and sadly hasn’t changed. We all have our risk profiles though obviously.