Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are asking the question, 'do foreigners with House Books have an advantage with regard to banking?' As we have discussed in other videos, we are talking about insurance for Bank deposits here in Thailand. I started going down this rabbit hole after I read a comment that said "oh bank accounts in Thailand are not insured." Not strictly speaking true, but for foreigners the insurance can be, well tremendously truncated. In fact for an account of a foreigner in Thailand I should say, it may not be insured, and I will get into this.

Quoting directly from the website of the dpa.or.th, that is the Deposit Protection Agency here in Thailand. I've done other videos on this, I'm not going to quote this whole thing again but I am going to call what is relevant. "Foreigners with Thai Baht deposit accounts at member financial institutions in Thailand are also protected under the Deposit Protection Agency Act. However, "Non-Resident Baht Accounts" as defined in the Exchange Control Act B.E. 2485 (that's 1942) are not protected." So they go through:

What's a "Non-Resident Baht Account" - is a special type of deposit account denominated in Thai baht that is used solely for transactions as specified in the Exchange Control Act. 

A "Non-Resident" means, and then 

1) it's like corporations 

2) foreign government entities 

3) branches and agents of domestic juristic persons located outside of Thailand,

and then finally most importantly I think for the purposes of this video,

4) natural persons not of Thai nationalities and not having an alien identity or residence permits." 

Okay, what does that mean? I have got to be honest with you, on this one I am really asking the question. I am going to go through and do a little bit of analysis but I don't know the answer so I may go ahead and do a further deep dive into a follow-up video on that but the question is it regards House books. So for those who are unaware, there are these things in Thailand called Tabian Baans which is a house registration book. For example, Thai Nationals have a Blue Tabian Baan. I look at it as kind of like an ongoing census if you will and it is also kind of the root Thai identity document. If you are born Thai, you get a birth certificate and then almost immediately, you are going to be put likely in your family's Blue Book, in your family's house registration book. That lets the authorities know where your house, where your address is registered here in Thailand. Now as we have discussed in other videos, there is what's called a Yellow Book which under the Civil Registration Act of 1991 was created to allow foreign nationals who don't hold Permanent Residence to have an ID book, to have a house registration book. 

Now bear in mind, Permanent Residents in Thailand that's not who we are talking about in this video; I am making a video specifically pertaining to those folks. Permanent Residents in Thailand get a blue book and as noted, Permanent Residents it looks like are already treated as if they were Thais for purposes of bank deposit insurance purposes. 

This video we are talking about Yellow Book holders, are they covered? It looks like they are, again it says have "and not having" so we have to figure out the people who do have either one of these things, "having alien Identity or residence permit." Well an alien identity document in my mind would be a Yellow House Book. It is specifically for aliens, it is for foreign nationals here in Thailand. One may make the argument in favour of Pink ID cards as well which oftentimes stem from having a Yellow House book. So I don't know the answer to this per se.

It would seem from just the reading of this website that that would be the case, but as we have discussed in other videos, for example in an Immigration context the Yellow House Book has no impact because the Civil Registration Act of 1991 is not the Immigration Act of 1979. In this situation, we are talking about banking, we are not talking about conflicting statutes; we are talking about banking specifically and it appears, again they say here, "alien Identity or residence permits." Again we will get to Residence Permits in a separate video but I think you can make a good argument that a Yellow House Book and a Pink ID Card are in fact alien identity documents. Now that said, whether or not Banks agree with this or there has subsequently been some other regulation pertaining to this remains to be seen. I will do some further research and we will certainly keep you updated on this channel as that situation evolves.