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How expatriates in the UK can earn 100,000 Avios points by joining Citigold Expat

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Citibank runs an Avios-earning deal for expats in the UK who move their banking to Citi.

Citibank has a standard Avios-earning offer for UK residents who sign up with Citigold Wealth Management, which has been running for two year now.  Full details are on the Citigold Wealth Management website here.  We covered the Citigold / Avios offer here in this article from April 2019 – you could earn up to 150,000 Avios.

If you an expat, Citibank has a separate offer for you which I want to look at today.

Full details of Citigold Expat are on the Citi website here.  You need to scroll a long way down before the Avios offer appears!

Citigold Expat Avios offer

Earning Avios with Citigold Expat

Citigold Expat is aimed at people moving to the UK to live or work.

It offers:

multi-currency bank accounts, including multi-currency debit cards

offshore wealth management

access to selected professional advisers who can help with finding a property, selecting a school for your children and finding a tax adviser

You get 50,000 Avios for opening an International Personal Bank account and moving $200,000 (or equivalent) into it.  This must remain in place for two months and the money must be ‘fresh’ to Citi.

You get 100,000 Avios for opening an International Personal Bank account via Citigold Private Client and moving $1,000,000 (or equivalent) into it.  This must remain in place for two months and the money must be ‘fresh’ to Citi.

Earn Avios from Citigold Expat

But note the cash alternative ….

Citi is happy to offer you cash instead of Avios.

You can swap the 50,000 Avios for $500 and the 100,000 Avios for $1000.

I would lean towards the miles, given this choice.  You are basically ‘buying’ Avios for 0.78p each which is an excellent deal.

I purposely haven’t gone into the full details of the Citigold Expat service.  What I like about the offer is that it provides an Avios opportunity to newcomers to the UK who may find themselves locked out of credit card sign-up offers.

You can find out more about the Avios / Citigold Expat offer here.  The offer runs until 31st December 2020.

how to earn avios from credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (January 2021)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

There are two official British Airways American Express cards:

British Airways American Express card

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up, no annual fee and a companion voucher for spending £20,000 Read our full review

BA Premium Plus American Express card BAPP

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the UK’s most valuable credit card perk – the 2-4-1 companion voucher Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points, such as:

Nectar American Express

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & two airport lounge passes Read our full review

American Express Platinum card Amex

The Platinum Card from American Express

30,000 points and an unbeatable set of travel benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

If you have a small business, we especially recommend Capital On Cap’s Visa card which comes with a generous bonus worth 10,500 Avios:

Capital On Tap Business Rewards Visa

The most generous Avios Visa or Mastercard for a limited company Read our full review

(Want to earn more Avios?  Click here to visit our home page for our latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios this month from offers and promotions.)

Category

British Airways and Avios

Comments (30)

  • Boi says:
    29 Jun29 June 06:03

    Anything similar for people moving *out* of UK?

    • Samuel Hon says:
      29 Jun29 June 07:12

      Same here

      Although the main thing I’m looking for is tax advice which Citi don’t cover

    • Spk says:
      29 Jun29 June 08:48

      Depends on the country you move to? For example, most singapore banks offer similar deals if you open a private banking (wealth management) account.

  • Gordon says:
    29 Jun29 June 08:23

    I would not recommend Citibank or their Citigold services. I was with Citigold for over 10 years. In the end I left due to a complete failure of their systems. When things work, the service is OK. When things go wrong it’s a mess. After escalating issues to their UK leadership team the profuse apologies were flowing, but they failed to follow-up on promises they made. So I left. Best decision I made!

    • Rob says:
      29 Jun29 June 08:51

      You know what there biggest problem is? Their UK ATMs work in the reverse way to all other ATM’s – the money comes out first, and then your card about a minute later. It is VERY easy to take the money and walk off, as you normally would, forgetting that your card hasn’t yet appeared and is about to be either a) taken by the person behind you or b) sucked back to the machine.

      Not that this has ever happened to me of course …..

      • Doug M says:
        29 Jun29 June 10:20

        I’d say a bigger problem is their vast network of UK ATMs.
        There’s two in Canary Wharf, are there any others left. Hanover Square closed, and didn’t St. Paul’s too?

        • flyforfun says:
          29 Jun29 June 14:06

          I think that’s all they have left.

          I’ve had a basic current account for a couple of decades but even living/working at the Wharf I rarely made the trek to a Citibank ATM to take out cash. Useful when going to other countries and swapping currencies on the debit card – provided you can find an ATM to withdraw cash. Last time I had to go up to the 27th floor of a building in Australia to get to the machine. Security didn’t understand why I wanted to use the machine but had to let me in!!

    • Ex Citi customer says:
      29 Jun29 June 22:44

      I’d agree with this. Former customer, I liked their multi currency on one card product, and they were a good bank. Then they closed the branch network, and downgraded their call centre staff’s autonomy to the point that the agents could do almost nothing except “let the back office team know”

      They lost an inbound transfer for a week and kept telling me it was going to turn up, and were surprised when I queried it. The staff would say anything to get me off the phone but then would deny saying this. If you can’t trust your bank with basic tasks and information you’re in a bad place.

      I’m very glad I’ve left them and can’t imagine trusting them with anything over a limited amount on deposit.

  • LB says:
    29 Jun29 June 08:30

    Expat or immigrant..? This has always been a bugbear of mine. Why is it that white “British” people emigrating to Spain (or wherever) to live are called expats but others coming to live in Britain are called immigrants? If we move to live in another country we are immigrants.
    Rant over.

    • Matt says:
      29 Jun29 June 08:38

      Depends where you are standing. If you’re Spanish, then they’re immigrants. If you’re living somewhere where they left then they’re emigrating, not immigrating.

    • Rhys says:
      29 Jun29 June 08:43

      Rob was referring to people moving TO the UK, not out!

      • Matt says:
        29 Jun29 June 10:03

        There’s no reason I can see to call them ex-pats – they’re migrant workers, immigrants….

    • Spk says:
      29 Jun29 June 08:51

      Not sure if it is correct, but in Asia, they tend to call them expats if they’ll be working for a few years only and have no intention to settle permanently. Most British and Europeans working in singapore and HK are called expats as they are unlikely to retire there.

    • Rui N. says:
      29 Jun29 June 09:17

      The usual difference is: white, rich folk, are expats. Non-white, or white non-educated people, are immigrants. 🙂

      • LB says:
        29 Jun29 June 09:30

        That’s what I thought.

      • Paul74 says:
        29 Jun29 June 09:36

        Indeed.

      • Aston100 says:
        29 Jun29 June 10:08

        This.
        I’ve never seen any Daily Mail headlines complaining about ex pats.

      • Charlieface says:
        29 Jun29 June 17:34

        Migrant workers refers to people who migrate looking for work. Ex-pats migrate into a job offer or retirement. I would have thought that’s what most people think.
        Granted the whole difference is probably just racism as you said…

        • J says:
          29 Jun29 June 19:54

          I’ve known people migrate to assured work who would be generally referred to as migrants, and those who travelled to find work who would be classed expats. It’s not necessarily flat out racism (class and job title plays a part too), but the nuance seems to be based on an intangible perception of desirability in which racism will always play a negative role.

      • AJA says:
        29 Jun29 June 18:55

        That is inverse racism. I worked some years ago for Samsung and we had Korean managers who came to the UK for a 2 or 3 year term. The same applies to the Japanese who come to the UK and work for Fujitsu and Sony amongst others. I’ve also worked with several Americans, including one who described himself as African-American, who were temporarily posted to the UK.

        They were all called Expats.What determined that description is that they immigrated temporarily into the UK for the length of the rotation and were expected to leave again at the end of the term.

        • J says:
          29 Jun29 June 19:47

          Ah, so just like all those seasonal expats we rely on to pick our summer harvest. Got it…

          • AJA says:
            29 Jun29 June 21:16

            No they are seasonal workers. Expats are usually white-collar professionals. As an aside I thought you lived in Germany? Did I get that wrong?

          • Aston100 says:
            30 Jun30 June 00:38

            Very well said.

    • Doug M says:
      29 Jun29 June 11:15

      Citi chose to call it expat, not anyone at HfP.

    • AJA says:
      29 Jun29 June 18:42

      An immigrant is someone (of any origin) pursuing long-term residence or citizenship in another country. An expatriate is someone staying abroad temporarily or of an undetermined period, especially a white-collar professional or someone from a wealthy or English-speaking country.

      • Aston100 says:
        30 Jun30 June 00:38

        Your definition of expat hardly fits all those who moved to the Costa del Sol.
        Are you sure you aren’t basing it on racist undertones?

        • AJA says:
          30 Jun30 June 13:54

          No.Note I specifically said (of any origin). How is that racist? I would describe Brits who move permanently to or with the intention of spending long amounts of time residing in their second homes on the Costa del Sol or elsewhere in Spain as immigrants into Spain and emigrants from the UK. Whether they choose to call themselves expats is up to them.

  • Anon says:
    29 Jun29 June 10:12

    Last time I looked at this for a USD account there was a quite high earning criteria but there was no timeframe (i.e. they want to target people who moved to the UK but you don’t have to open the account within a set time of coming to the country. You could have lived in the UK for 3 years before opening one as long as you’re a foreigner). Is this still the case?

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