Barclaycard closing our a/cs on November 16th!

Just keep your fingers crossed that they decide to continue offering accounts to customers with solely French adresses, I suppose its a matter of wait and see.

Same for me with my NatWest account. There has been no indication, at least, not yet, that anything is going to change. I just hope it remains that way.

Without being too negative it seems banks etc are deciding which if any EU countries they want or its economic to have customers.
They are gradually working through decision process, the key is they have ALL lost passporting rights, so have to decide if it’s worth striking country to country deals. A local subsidiary, and few now have them, makes little difference as an account with it is a local one and akin to having an account with say CA.
The only possibility medium term is if a financial services deal is done it might have “equivalence” ie reciprocal cross border banking which might mean a UK domestic bank (now ring-fenced to being uk domiciled) could again offer a UK regulated account to French residents who have no UK address.

That seems at odds with what my bank told me - which was that unless France introduced new fiscal regulations there would be no change in our UK accounts. The went on to say that Holland HAD introduced new regulations - hence the fact that some banks were closing accounts there. My bank is not a large one and has said IF the French authorities introduced new regs. they would not look to comply with them and would instead close accounts. Fingers crossed that has happened yet.

Its all a muddle and no certainty yet one way or the other.

What is the latest on bank accounts, …there was a post about

…any change, I had a small deposit a/c and have successfully opened a current account with Nationwide, who at present are ok with french residency, but admitted it might change in the future.

No problems with Lloyds… not heard a murmur from them about any possible difficulties/problems etc with our accounts …

Ditto HSBC and Barclaycard. But as discussed earlier, we are existing customers with existing accounts. Not sure possible to open any new account or to be a new customer.
@strudball I think in the current situation John no news is good news,

I suppose they are waiting to see if UK and EU grant each other equivalence in financial services, but by all accounts talks not being very productive.
If no agreement i guess they will then do an account trawl for those with EU adresses.
Friends of ours recently got a standard letter with T&C changes from Barclays Bank which specifically referred to Banks right to exercise closure option for customers not RESIDENT in UK.

According to this link… which I have only just noticed/found… Lloyds are closing some accounts, but for only a few countries… NOT the whole EU.

They are not “banning” France… yippee

All seems quiet since the round of news on potential Barclaycard users outside UK having accounts closed and some banks. Like others our Barclaycard and Barclay’s bank facilities continue as normal.

Nationwide, isnt that a building society rather than a bank?
John, you say you opened an account with them recently but did you have any other existing connections accounts with them?

I continue to do battle with HSBC as they are the only bank that offer online current accounts for none UK residents but something tells me after 5 months of trying that they are sitting on the fence to see what happens in the long term.
I have met all that they ask and each time they then move the goalposts.
Even after getting firm instructions from there helpdesk when sending what they asked it was declined.
I am more determined than them and will not be beaten .
That is a very much abbreviated account of progress or not to date, I have a very large file running!!

yes, it was a building society and turned itself into a bank, albeit a mutual owned by members…but to all intents and purpose no different to a normal high street bank…except many more branches and a brilliant online application. And yes I did have a saving account which made it easier to open a current account as we are not in uk. I am still using a uk address, though customer service said that at the MOMENT it would still be OK to use our French adresse.

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I see you already had an account with Nationwide.
Opening an account with HSBC or any other bank where you dont have existing accounts is a totally different ball game.

yep, we have an HSBC account with UK adress, but when we sell that I wonder how they will react to it being replaced by our French one…ditto Barclays and now Nationwide…lest you think I’m wealthy they are all small accounts and kept so hopefully one at least can be left open !!

I trust you are declaring all these accounts to the French fisc with your tax return - form 3916 :wink:

Absolutely…very carefull to do that, and I use a very good english but French domiciled accountant to do my first years return, for a very acceptable fee.

Nationwide has been very good so far. If they are still managing to support accounts for French residents at the moment, I don’t see why that is likely to stop - surely any agreement (if there is one) regarding financial serives is not going to be actually WORSE than the current situation? :thinking:

Organisations have to think now that financial “passporting” is no
longer in force …do we meet the new requirements, and if yes, are the increased EU reporting/admin’EU requirements economically worth it, if requiments are not met does the business case make it worthwhile to set up new arrangements for a few thousand customers… probably not.
It all revolves round the fact that UK financial services no longer have an automatic right to service customers based in the EU from a UK registered and domiciled entity. The "current situation changed dramatically 31st Dec

Could this impact French UK Account holders?

When Barclaycard announced they would be closing certain non uk holder accounts last September/October which started the rumours and in some cases fact that various UK banks would do the same l decided to look into opening an account with the only uk bank that advertised they would open accounts with non residents this being HSBC the worlds bank as they like to see themselves.
Thankfully my current bank has not closed my facilities (yet?) And I hope that situation continues but just in case I decided to open an account with HSBC as it could all be done on line and the process was simple.
I started the application in October last year and it has taken almost 6 months of letters, phonecalls and complaints as the goal posts took up a new position at each twist and turn.
Yesterday I recieved yet another email from my complaints case manager advising that they had learnt much from the situation and although a monetary reward does not replace good service they were pleased to announce that an account has now been opened in my wife and myself name and in it is £300 to say sorry for the stress caused.
We now await documents arriving in the post and we are told by their welcome blurb that they are so confident that we will receive it within 7 days that if not we can claim £10!!!
I really dont have the enthusiasm to bother anymore even if it doesn’t arrive in time.