As I understand it Lloyds are not closing accounts registered at French addresses, yet.
@tim17 I think the operative word there Tim is “yet”.
This is what The Telegraph is saying …
Britons abroad face a current account closure “lottery” as banks start to cut services in EU countries because of Brexit.
Britain’s biggest bank, Lloyds Banking Group, which also owns Halifax and Bank of Scotland, has written to 13,000 expats who live in Europe to tell them their accounts held in Britain will close from November. The move affects personal and business customers in Holland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Slovakia.
Cross-border rules after Brexit mean British banks will no longer be able to provide UK banking services to expats resident in EU countries unless they set up a separate legal entity in each region. This creates added costs for the banks and will result in services being cut in countries where it no longer makes financial sense to operate. Each bank will make its own decision on account closures according to the amount of business it does in each EU nation and the cost of keeping services going.
Lloyds said its decision was regrettable and it had told affected customers they would need to make other arrangements for any regular payments before it closed their account. The changes apply to all brands across the Lloyds group.
HSBC has a large number of customers in France and has already moved most who still use a British bank account to its French arm. It is now considering applying for legal permission to continue to provide UK services in some countries. The bank also has a significant number of customers in Germany and Switzerland. A spokesman said no account closures were planned for now.
Barclays is “reviewing the situation” to make sure it complies with the law in each EU country in which it has customers as the Brexit transition progresses and said it would contact anyone affected by account closures directly.
Santander and NatWest, which owns RBS, said they had no plans to close the accounts of any customers resident in the EU at present.
We have a UK accommodation address so I’m hoping we can use that should Lloyds go the same way as Barclaycard.
Mmm - that may be a challenge. Are you on the electoral register? Paying the electricity bill? etc etc. It’s supposed to be your residence. I think this is one of the problems with all of this, it will encourage people to try their luck or to rely on less than fully regulated financial institutions.
Is it though?
@tim17 The title to the email they sent on Friday:
Please confirm your UK residential address
I now have nothing to lose - so I intend to phone Barclaycard and ask them what they mean by this and will they accept the address of a property we own in the UK that we do not live in. I think I know the answer!
There seems to be a difference between types of financial institution. Our Saga savings account we had to give up as they asked us to confirm we are UK residents, which of course we couldn’t. Same with other savings accounts where there was a period of a year of so where we got sent forms to fill in about whether we were tax resident anywhere else. Others have just asked for a UK residential address and our French Tax Number.
It seems there is no fixed and absolute thing, it all depends on the body.
OH is going to contact Lloyds to see what is likely to happen going forward as it would cause us a major problem if we had to close our account. We are also going to look into opening another UK bank account as a backup.
But with which bank? How do you know which other UK banks may do the same ?
AMEX is pretty useless in France outside of the really big cities. Provincial stores aren’t prepared to pay the commission to accept them.
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I contacted NatWest Credit Card services yesterday and was informed that they are switching their existing Visa cards to Mastercard and that (unlike Barclaycard) their services to customers resident abroad will continue.
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@Sarah_Williams Good to know Sarah. At the moment, from the Telegraph article, it looks as if HSBC is continuing in France, though they haven’t spelt out whether their customers will be able to open sterling credit cards etc from next year or whether they will only be able to keep their existing a/c. I’m hoping the former.
I think the challenge for all of us at the moment is that we are having, as individuals, to take the initiative and phone up helplines to find out what is going on. The banks’ communications to ALL their EU customers needs to be much better, otherwise people will be sleepwalking into this.
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The Co-op bank and HSBC allow non-residents to open accounts, I doubt anyone answer the second question.
Well, well. Just had a very interesting conversation with someone at Barclays customers service (only took an hour of being shunted around and put on hold to find her). Interestingly, NOT Barclaycard. She told me her system said “change to UK address”. I told her, my letter / email said “If you are resident in the UK”.
She then checked with someone at Barclaycard and they agreed I could change the address on my card to the property we own in the UK, even though I’m not resident there. So that is what we have done. All correspondence from them to continue to come to my French email - so nothing going to that UK address.
Let’s see how long that works before someone says “oops!”
In the meantime, if it works, I’m mightily relieved.
So anyone else living full-time in France with a UK address and you want to keep your Barclaycard - give it a try.
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Sounds like BC are willing to turn a blind eye as long as there is a UK address to which they can have on file and/or use for correspondence (I’d make sure any snail mail sent to that address gets forwarded to you).
Thanks for the thought Paul. She said there was the option to have ALL correspondence to continue to come to my French email - which she’s ticked for me. So hopefully no snail mail.
Hopefully it will never apply but anything “legal” might have to be sent out physically rather than emailed - and if there was anything “legal” you’d want it sent on I would imagine!
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Just want to emphasise at no point did I attempt to mislead/lie to Barclays/Barclaycard. I kept emphasising that I am not resident in the UK, that I live in France and they still accepted the address.
I fail to see that Barclaycard or any of the others actually care if you are resident at the UK address you give them. As long as they have a UK address it will satisfy their systems and procedures.
Hope you are right Peter. In which case, I think a number of EU residents with places still in the UK will be very relieved. In which case, it would be better if they word their communications differently and not ask people to confirm they are RESIDENT in the UK!