I have found this interesting forum Survive France whilst searching ‘re opening a bank account whilst resident in France’. Thank you.
We are permanent residents of France paying and declaring worl wide income.
I find this all very disturbing…
It appears we are not the only ones that have received a letter from HSBC in the Isle of Man saying that there policy has changed, only residents may hold and offshore account, they have offered to switch us to the UK. 2 accounts are on offer a standard account or a basic account.
Standard account requires a regular income of £500 + per month going in, we can’t show this as our pension and other income comes to France and our investments are elsewhere.
Instead they would offer us a Basic account ( this might be of interest to some as I have read that banks prefer to keep this option quiet as it is for people not with a permanent address in the UK, many banks apparently could offer this to non residents.
The basic account has no cheque book, no credit card, only a debit card and online banking.No savings accounts. They said we can choose which town in the UK!
I insisted that we prefer a Standard account as we recieve cheque payments for 4 months of the year , and offered to transfer £500 per calendar month from a savings account. Or have our pension paid into the account.
They left me hanging on the phone whist they discussed it with their team, 20 minutes later he returned to say they have never had our situation before but the team decieded my offer of transferring 500 a month was manipulating the account, and they could not accept the idea that we had our pension paid into the account because they new we would transfer it to France and again there exact words were we would not be using the account as intended!!!
A basic account was all they would offer and they would do a direct switch.
They have excepted our UK a address on statement that are sent to our daughters.
Even though I explained we return to UK for between 3 to 4 months of the year to live with our daughter.
I have studied this basic account and it would do but we feel bullied.
The satisfaction I have had is removing all investments!
Also I am thinking we will lose our credit card rating as we won’t have a credit card.
I thought about writing to the financial ombudsman. I would appreciate your opinion if someone could spare me the time.
I don’t wish to confuse the issue but we are premier account holders and they say we can link with HSBC France, it is out of the question, and as we are removing investments away from HSBC We will soon only qualify for … As they offered a basic account but because we are a premier customer at this time they will do the switch to the UK?
I have spoken to Nat West in the IOM a and they are phoning me on Monday as regards opening a new account, I asked was their any issues as regards us being resident in France and the great reply was no problem, we have clients all over the world, I hope that info is useful to anyone looking for an account.
But back to HSBC I am so cross as we have been with them since 2001 whist resident in the IOM For 20+ years. Thanks for listening!
We had a Nat West premier account with a black card, but found out, were not told, that when we moved to France all the benefits applied to UK residents only!
We still have a NatWest account, but Sainsbury's have closed our savings account.
To me this is totally against freedom of movement within the EU.