> can they stop being so anal about “home addresses” so people traveling abroad for a few months don’t have to stress?

P.O. or private mail box.

I'm not who you replied to.

Banks are cracking down on PO boxes and CMRAs as the residential address for their clients. It's fine as the mailing address, but people who travel abroad full time may not have a permanent residential address.

Right now, you can choose to use a friend/family address, or you can pay a company to provide a residential address for you.

We should be able to say "I have no permanent residential address since I'm travelling, please send all mail to this CRMA.", but that isn't a supported scenario today.

This all gets complicated for full-time US travellers abroad who may spend all year outside of the country, but they still have to have domicile in some state even when they don't have a permanent address in any state.

I looked into some of this stuff when we were moving across the country and temporarily had no actual permanent address (living out of AirBnBs) including no home under contract, and it would have been very nice to set up a PO Box and local bank account.

I couldn't figure out a way to do it. Even looking at services aimed at people living in RVs didn't seem like it was going to work. For one thing, I couldn't get a PO Box without a home address, LOL.

I've lived abroad for 15 years.

Banks know which addresses are residential and which ones are commercial. Sometimes you can get away with using a mail forwarding service until you get a KYC review. But if you can't provide a real residential address when that happens you'll run into problems (freezes, account closures). I've had it happen.

That's a great way to get your bank account shut down and your balance mailed to your last known residential address.

Patriot act paranoia.