I couldn't get
UK insurance on my US licence when I moved to the UK. Had to get the licence changed. You can get it for other EU countries but outside the EU is tough.
The other problem I had was when I left, because the law changed a few years ago, because in Canada they want a list of any claims (your abstract) and in the UK they abolished it and it's all kept on a central register that only registered insurance agents can access, I had a hell of a job to get my insurance records. What people were doing was shopping around agents to make it look like their record wasn't as bad as it was, (i.e. use a bogus agent) so they required it all to be kept centrally. Because my record was partly before and partly after the change I ended up with this enormous pile of bits of paper, because my agent had changed underwriters several times without telling me.
Steve.