Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Bank Balances associated with Retirement Visas. For those who are unaware, there are two types of financial evidence which can be utilized when maintaining, and by maintaining I mean extending an O or an O-A Retirement Visa, here in Thailand. One is via use of monthly pension payments or evidence a monthly pension payments coming in to one's Thai Bank Account. Another method of dealing with this issue is by Bank Balance. 

Now for those who are unaware, although frequent viewers of this channel probably are very well aware, Thai Retirement Visas require an ongoing minimum balance of 800,000 Baht in a Thai Bank Account in order for renewal to occur on a yearly basis; you need to show evidence of that 800,000 Baht again or evidence of an ongoing pension being paid in. Oftentimes many of our clients find maintaining the 800,000 Baht is oftentimes the most straightforward way of dealing with this. 

Now that said, in the past we have seen major scrutiny sort of tightening if you will of the immigration regulations surrounding Bank Balances. In the past there was a whole timing thing of 90 days prior you had to have the full amount in, right up to the point of which you extended and then even after extension occurred it would be like they would want to see it 60 days after that balance maintained and they never wanted to see it go below 400,000, go below 50%. Here recently, in recent months and especially during the Emergency Decree for the pandemic, we didn't see that issue really come to the foreground quite as often. During the Emergency Decree it was due to the fact that Immigration Officers had sort of pocket discretion to deal with that issue. During the post-emergency decree if you will we are kind of back to status quo ante. We haven't seen a lot of issues associated with bank balances but I stress this point, "yet", we haven't seen anything yet. 

As we have discussed in other videos, there has been a lot more heavy scrutiny at Thai Immigration here recently especially in the aftermath of the Emergency Decree. I think that there is reason to believe that this scrutiny and the sort of heightened scrutiny state will probably continue into the relatively foreseeable future, the sort of immediately foreseeable future and the thing to take away from this video and understand is that those Bank Balances, yeah that 800,000 Baht needs to be there but for how long and the exact requirements surrounding that Bank Balance may have some kind of shifting nuances as time goes on. So as always, we will certainly keep people updated on this channel as the situation evolves.