Interesting. CIC Ouest has told me to move my account. I have a month to organise another home for my money.
Yes, they have a right to do that.
Why?
Over the last year I’ve transferred significant assets from the UK to France. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one.
I have provided two sets of completion statements for sale of UK properties, contract notes for sales of shares, and bank statements showing a large balance in my UK bank account. The sums involved were significantly more than those transferred. All these pieces of paperwork were provided within a week of being asked for.
Apparently despite this, they don’t want my business because
(1) the sums do not tally exactly with the amounts transferred to France or dates of transfer. (eg when I sold shares, and didn’t transfer the amount till a week later.)
(2) the contract notes have not been “tamponné par l’Administration Fiscale Française”. Which makes no sense at all to me, though perhaps someone can enlighten me ?
So okay, I’m pissed off. And letting off a bit of steam here.
But I’m pretty sure there are other people who will be transferring assets from the UK, perhaps having sold a house and renting for a while before purchasing in France. So: watch out if you’re doing this. If I was doing it again, I would open a second bank account as soon as possible after the first - a free online account so as not to have extra costs - and I would be extremely careful about transfers.
I’ve never had any difficulty moving substantial six figure sums to and from HSBC France Andrea. If CIC don’t want your business I’d suggest you pop into you local HSBC, in the UK or France, ask for an appointment with a premier advisor and they’ll sort you out. I have had a horror of dealing with over dressed, over paid, supercilious, smug French bankers since I first lived here in the early Eighties a d I won’t touch them ever again.
As was his advice!
If someone stops you from transferring money from UK to France to pay for a house and all the subsequent expenses, it is preventing freedom of movement.
I know that this might not be the situation for much longer, and trying to take on a Bank with more resources than any individual is not an easy job, but the advice given to try another Bank is the best.
Credit Agricole run Britline and they are well used to Brits bringing money over from UK.
Yes, refusing to accept evidence of source of funds because it was issued in another EU member state is very dubious.
I do wonder whether with Brexit coming, every French banker is going to be looking at transfers from the UK as a risk. We’re going to be on the same blacklist as the Russians and Chinese.
I’m really quite surprised by this having managed a reasonably large investment portfolio in the UK and only once had an easily answered query on source of funds.
It does seem as though certain French take a delight in thwarting anything they see as ‘English’.
I remember many years ago a post on SFN where someone was denied their right by a fonctionnaire because the UK was not in the EU. They obviously did not acknowledge tge difference between the EU and the eurozone.
And now they’re making it crazily difficult for me to transfer money to Boursarama. Filbanque won’t allow me to make virements online, I’m supposed to subscribe to some new extra service in order to do so. It doesn’t come as standard with the account! Just like being able to use my carte bleue for internet purchases didn’t come as standard.
Credit Agricole are the same (at least CA Normandie/Britline are) - French banks often seem to have Customer services attitudes which are straight out of the 1970’s
Hi Paul… Perhaps the Britline CA does not work in the same way as the normal run-of-the-mill Bank… no idea why it should be thus, but, who knows…
When we bought our French house, it made sense to bank nearby, so we simply opened an account with CA in the nearby town… no problems… full services are easy and readily available… I can do things on line if I wish… or I can go and speak (face to face)… debit cards etc … all just as it had been in UK…
I’m not in a position to compare as I haven’t yet run into anything that they make too difficult - I find the limits on spending odd coming from the UK but not that restricting. I suspect it might be different if I lived in France permanently.
They appear to operate as would any branch of CA Normandie - certainly I just use the CA Normandie log-in, I don’t go through the Britline web site.
I am down south and know of Brits hereabouts, who have chosen Britline Normandy… simply because they have no/little French and doing everything in English is simply so much easier for them. One or two have complained that they have to “pay-in” by post… ??? or something… but other than that, they seem happy enough.
No, electronic transfers in using the IBAN work fine, I use Transferwise.
I must admit - while I’m OK with written French (mostly, it takes me a little while sometimes) I struggle with spoken French, especially on the phone so the fact of an English speaking customer service department is appealing.
Not that I use it - I haven’t had any problem using the web site (which is all in French).
Well… if I had known that, I could have set them straight… mind you, it was a few years ago… but, even so… If I see them again, I’ll ask how they are managing nowadays…
Very, very annoying; to transfer your main bank account takes 45 days. Opening one took three weeks.
And CiC gave me two months to move.
So I can’t use the automatic transfer system. Every single bill payment will have to be manually changed, taking me a couple of days to check and cross check that everything is done.
And I am going to have to pay CIC for transferring my own money to another bank account. It may only be 8 euros but they are basically charging me money for having told me to f*** off.
For the record: Boursorama was very easy to open. Fortuneo a bit less so, despite the fact I already had a brokerage account there.
