Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Work Permits in the context of Thai Bank accounts. I decided to make this video after talking to a friend actually who was telling me "man there is just a ton of information out there, highly erroneous, some of it relatively new." A lot of more erroneous information about bank accounts it is pretty old, you will see it in an old forums and things and it is just "okay that is from 2006. I am going to go ahead and find something more up to date", but this person that was I was talking to even said "no, the stuff that came out weeks ago is just way off base." It made me go ahead and think I will go ahead and make a video and just discuss this in a general context. 

Generally speaking and let's start off by prefacing this by saying bank policy is not necessarily legal policy. There isn't a law out there that says: "hey banks, you have to require this documentation" but banks do have to engage in so called KYC concerns or considerations, Know Your Customer. They also, they don't really want to, it has been my experience most banks here in Thailand do not want to deal with folks that they think can just wander off because they have to maintain the account and if the account falls into disuse, then a clock kind of starts ticking and eventually they may have to revert to the state to deal with. It is my experience that the Thai Banking system wants to know they are dealing with somebody who is going to be around and for this reason a Work Permit oftentimes is required as an integral component to Thai Bank account set up by many banks here in Thailand. I am not saying all of them and I am not saying all of them or any of them all of the time. Yes you will read about: "oh my friend went to this bank at this time and got this done without this document or that document including a Work Permit”, but again for the most part it has been our experience especially when they are dealing with foreigners, especially foreigners under the retirement age, they want to see that that person has a Work Permit before they are going to go ahead and allow them to set up a bank account. This is especially also the case with respect to Americans due to what is called FATCA out of the United States legislation which puts a rather onerous requirement on foreign banking institutions who have American depositors. Due to that legislation, a lot of Thai Banks in my experience especially when dealing with Americans, especially Americans under the retirement age here in Thailand, they generally want to see a Work Permit. Now again, that is not all the time; things will vary; this is based on Bank policy; Bank policy that may be a bit subject to interpretation depending on the officer of the bank you are dealing with.

Long story short if you have a Work Permit, the process of opening a bank account in Thailand is going to be substantially less complex than if you don't.