Timothy,
Why wouldn’t they allow us to register our rights 6 months, a year, 5 years ago?
French law has ALWAYS allowed us to register our rights BUT French bureaucracy has ignored our legal rights.
Grahame Pigney
P Help save paper - please don’t print this email unless you really need to.
P Sauvegardons la planète. Avez-vous vraiment besoin d’imprimer cet e-mail?
pathetic drivel 
I do very much hope that you are not planning to apply for French nationality…
My wife and I applied on-line last year, did you?
no Tim… he’s French (or so he told @vero) 
Please guys can I ask a favour. Please, please don’t turn this thread into a “yes it is” “no it isn’t” argument yet again. If that happens people will stop reading. If there are more general issues you want to discuss about UK v EU please do it elsewhere.
I believe this whole issue of how the banks are treating us is one of the most important threads on this forum and people need to continue to read it. Not least, without doubt, things will change over the coming weeks / months and it’s important everyone here with UK bank accounts living in France or French bank accounts living in the UK keeps abreast of developments - I still can’t believe NatWest’s wait and see attitude for example and now I don’t trust HSBC, given their current woes.
I’ll say it yet again, one of the most significant outcomes of this debacle is likely to be that elderly widows and widowers returning to the UK in the future will find, much to their distress at a really difficult time in their lives, that they struggle to find ANY financial institution willing to let them open a bank account. This is why I think this topic is so important.
Yes, trying to open an bank account in the UK with no credit rating, no electoral roll, no gas bill, no council tax and no UK history could prove difficult.
It is an important topic of course but I rather favour the view and reference posted by @JohnBoy which matches the advice I have already received from one of my UK banks and the absence of comment from the others so I am not in any way panicked by the prospect. If push came to shove, you can use a variety of ways to receive your pension money such as Credit Unions and the Payment Exception Service so all is not lost if your bank disowns you. The DWP as well as CAB will be there to help and advise where necessary.
All credit to you @SuePJ for bringing the issue to our attention in this thread (no pun intended) and I’m sure people will want to keep a keen eye on any developments.
Thanks for the encouragement Graham and you make a good point. My concern is that it is a betrayal of a customer base that I suspect for many has been intensely loyal over many years. Certainly those who are of more advanced age are the least likely to have chopped and changed banks over the years. And what should be a remarkably easy move suddenly becomes something that needs help and advice and becomes a cause for anxiety and frustration. As I’ve said earlier, I never rule out the fact that I may end back in the UK alone - I suggest not the moment to be making distressed calls to CAB.
It’s what they do… their counsellors are very experienced and capable beings so no worries about contacting them over a whole range of issues and I am certain that they would respond to someone still living in the EU with intentions of moving back to the UK but facing issues.
The banks will see this as an opportunity to withdraw from certain markets, many have plans for events such as Brexit or after major events in the world. After 911, Deutsche Bank re assessed their business and decided on parts they would not recover if certain disaster were to occur in the future. Many of the banks see people that pay off their debt on a monthly basis as a cost and therefore desirable to remove from their customer base. Complaining to the FCA is likely a waste of effort as ultimately they are there as a result of the financial institutions and are funded by them. The FOS should be the place to complain to but I suspect they are also there to ease the pain rather than have a decent set of teeth to enforce any fairness in the financial world. As Graham says, there will be many ways of continuing to be able to move finance from the EU to the UK and in reverse. I applaud your determination 
I have just spoken to a delightful young lady at Barclays Bank who tried to explain how although all my Barclays bank accounts have been closed I still have a Barclays profile which my Barclaycard is linked to. Hopefully it has now been sorted.
@Poppyfields Sorry Poppy, don’t understand what that means. Would you mind explaining further please.
The following is what @Poppyfields said earlier.
My Barclaycard has a UK address but they say there is a Barclays Bank account with a foreign address. 4 years ago I fell out with Barclays Bank and closed all our accounts, or thought I had they had me going round the bend with their inefficiency to do a simple task. Anyway they closed them in dribs and drabs the last one supposedly whilst I was actually on the phone to them in 2017 but it seems there is still one remaining with 17p in it, the lovely young woman I spoke to at Barclaycard (after waiting 40 minutes for someone to answer) told me that as she could access the Barclays Bank accounts but she couldn’t close it or change the address on it she said I would have to go into a branch of Barclays Bank to do that. What a palaver.
@JohnBoy @Poppyfields Thanks John. I remember now. Poppy - no need to add to this. Thanks.
This is what I am sending to the head of the Financial Ombudsman Service. I strongly suggest those of you affected by all of this do something similar.
Caroline Wayman,
Financial Ombudsman Service
Exchange Tower,
Harbour Exchange Square,
Isle of Dogs, London E14 9SR
Dear Ms Wayman,
Banks closing UK sterling accounts of their EU customers
I am writing to you because I believe an injustice is being enacted by the British banking industry on thousands of customers who live in the EU in the name of “market forces”. This goes beyond the commercial decisions of individual banks to a collective, industry-wide abandonment of some of its most loyal customers.
Yes, we may complain to individual banks and go through the “procedures” that eventually lead back to the FOS, but by then the damage will have been done and it will be too late. Hence my reaching out to you now to see if solutions can be found with financial institutions whilst there is still time.
British bank customers who live in the EU often need to maintain a UK sterling account presence. They may have UK pensions, rent from UK property and so on. Yes, in most instances, arrangements can be made to have these moneys paid into their local European bank, but this may be a far from ideal solution. Customers take an exchange rate hit. If they then need that money back in the UK (for holidays, internet purchases, repairs to property, gifts to family etc), they take a further exchange rate hit.
There is a further injustice. On moving to Europe, received wisdom is “ do not close your UK bank account ”. Why? Because once closed, it becomes almost impossible to open a new sterling account. We are at the mercy of the credit rating agencies and without a UK credit “footprint” financial institutions will not open their doors. This is the particular cruelty of the current situation. The media is reporting individual institutions saying – as they close accounts - “ our customers will have to make other arrangements ”. What if no other arrangements are available to us?
The recent Barclaycard and Lloyds communications have stirred up a hornets nest of anxiety among the expatriate community, with a flood of social media comment and advice (some of it totally spurious). This is leading to bank customer behaviour which may be at the margins of legality and prudence (behaviour which is totally alien to customers who have been with their banks for 30, 40, 50 years); for example, using Transferwise and Revolut as if they are a full current account service when they are not within the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, or using addresses of family, or rental property in the UK to imply an ongoing UK residency.
Thank you for your attention. I hope that you feel this issue merits consideration at the most senior levels of the UK banking industry and, despite the difficult circumstances surrounding Brexit, that a positive and long-term solution can be found.
Yours sincerely,
Susan Jarvis
Cc: Nikhil Rathi, FCA; The Prime Minister’s Office; David Frost, UK Brexit Chief Negotiator
@spj I sent you a DM
Gov’t has just reissued their “living in Europe” guidance saying there is a change to the banking section.
It now reads:
“Most people living in Europe should not see any change to their banking when the transition period ends (31 December 2020). Whether UK banks can service customers living in an EEA country is a matter of local law and regulation. Also banks are set up differently, and may have taken different actions to continue to serve their customers.
Your bank or finance provider should contact you if they need to make any changes to your product or the way they provide it. If you have any concerns about whether you might be affected, contact your provider or seek independent financial advice.”
Which I think is rubbish as it’s the UK banks that are governing this, not local laws! And as for seeking independant advice if a UK based adviser has not got passporting rights then they can’t advise you - or rather they can advice you but there would be no comeback on them if they gave yiu rubbish advice.
Beat me to it Jane, just copied and then I saw your post 
In regard to Revolut, I came across this reference which explains how they are (or will be) going to deal with any issue…