We had the same “request” along with other things they wanted to know, like did we have another property, if so, what is its value. They would not accept my inital answer of ‘whatever anyone is prepared to pay for it’. When I said I would not give the answers, it was suggested that my account could be blocked. I had a UK e-mail address (ending in .co.uk) and that is why it was targetted. Had to open another with a .com ending to avoid it happening again. They have never tried to sell me insurance or anthing else.
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Why bank with these people? This is the old French banking attitude that I remember from the early eighties . Bank staff were inappropriately well dressed (who’s paying for that?) lazy and dismissive. Those days have gone.
I’ve been with HSBC (was CCF now CCF again) for twenty years, apart from a few incompetents in the early years (before HSBC fired them) the service has been excellent. It’s a buyers market, so I’d tolerate nothing less.
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It does apply to foreigners. If anyone has problems, La Poste is the easiest place to open an account.
Since it is privatized now, I’m not sure if that’s just tradition carrying over from when it was a government entity. But basically that is why you often see more homeless people withdrawing money there than at other banks, or so I have been told.
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How interesting, I didn’t know CA had a bit of a reputation, going by your comment. I also had an annoying experience with them when they somehow transferred my current account over to them BEFORE I had signed a mortgage offer I took home to read. I ended up refusing that offer and then getting failed payment notifications for pre-authorized payments with my first bank. I’m one of those who reads everything before signing so I still don’t know how they managed it!
It’s one of those banks where you also buy a share in the bank before opening an account and the advisor, unprofessionally in my opinion, stated matter of factly that she was opening a PEA for me to own that share. Except you can’t have two PEAs in France, and I already had one! (And for any newcomers, shop around for your PEA in terms of custodian fees, transaction fees, etc. Huge differences between banks and online platforms.) So yeah, that would be the last bank I would consider from now on! I hate feeling played like a fiddle.
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They charged a massive fee for receiving a transfer from our English account and then their rep said that they would refund that fee and not charge one on another transfer if we opened 2 LEP savings accounts, which we duly did.
Not only did they not make the refund but also charged again on the next transfer. I confronted the manager in the branch who said that the rep wasn’t there, even though I could see her in the office behind him, so she was forced to come out and face me with a very shame face saying that her offers had been overruled. I then found out that they charged 30% to receive a €100 cheque for a small proof reading of an English translation of a specialist German book. I crossed the street to La Poste. To add insult to injury, though this was not the fault of CA, they spelled my name wrong in the dedication in the book. 
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Staff will be picking up commissions for selling insurance. With CA it will be Pacifica in the background
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Yep same here, HSBC in the UK (they were called Midland when I opened my account ) and HSBC here in France which as you say are now called CCF, CCF just run the high street operation, HSBC take care of the high wealth (not me ) CCF are excellent, better than HSBC was .
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We’re also with them and have had no such request yet…!
Yes. CA Britline sent me an email a month or two ago, that was clearly standard, saying they needed to update their records, and would be sending me a short online questionnaire to complete regarding our assets. I must admit I didn’t give it any great thought, as they hold all our various bank accounts, savings and insurance (including contents and building insurance via Pacifica) anyway. In practice the questions (only about 2 or 3) were indeed about our house and its value. My wife was sent an identical email, and we tried to ensure we gave the same valuation answers!
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Do they do this in the UK? I don’t remember the Nationwide ever asking me anything too intrusive.
I suspect it’s easier in the UK with the use of credit reference agencies, which I don’t think happens in France.
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No I’ve never been interrogated about my assets by NW, though my UK pension provider did ask me for some details a few months ago but that was so they had relevant info for giving me financial advice.
With respect to the original post, I think it would be helpful if the financial institution made it clear why they were asking these questions (e.g. as part of their obligation to combat money laundering), rather than just firing it off and expecting the customer to hand over lots of personal info regardless.
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It’s more likely to be anti money laundering and I can see banks might be more worried about foreign account holders who will not be depositing a salary cheque where the bank can easily see where the money is coming from but will be making intermittent, possibly sizeable, transfers to their accounts.
If the source is dodgy and the bank not checking it could be complicit in money laundering (bad day for all concerned if found out).
At the end of the day I would be happy to supply a copy of my current payslip to confirm to CA Britline that I am a) employed and b) my salary more than justifies reasonably large transfers when needed, ditto for a payslip of my wife’s. In fact I stuffed enough money to cover running the house for about five years when travel restrictions started to hit during Covid and I was genuinely worried it might be years before we could get to the house and that exchange restrictions might be a thing - I’m slightly surprised they didn’t ask me to demonstrate the source of those funds. In the end I managed to get to the house about twice a year.
I’m not terribly happy, given that I’m not tax resident in France, to start telling them how much my UK property is worth, or what other assets I have.
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Their Compliance team told me they’re not really interested in amounts below €80k…
It may also depend from the country of origine; I was asked to justify CHF 50k, they had a heart attack when I transfer much more.
Surprised it’s that high. The EU limit for cash transactions is 10k€ and ID verification is needed for transfers over 1000€ (which is one reason banks might want to keep any ID they hold on file up to date).
Repeated, below the threshold, transactions ought to trigger interest - not sure if they do.
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@Jane_Williamson I think this is yet another case of a bank, and CA has been mentioned a few timea on SF, trying to claim KYC justifies this intrusion which is a *****y cheek.
If I’m not borrowing from them or doing anything else which exposes them, and you’ll know if you are by now and given how long you’ve been with them they should have enough of their own evidence of your trustworthiness, then frankly I think @_Brian has the right answer and the perfect way of going about it.
I am sure they’d be a lot more upset if you were to close your account.
Credit Agricole are an “ interesting “ bank.
When we have used their credit card, payment has been refused despite money in the account.
I told the “ boy in the bank” that I was impressed to be using a financial supplier who restrained spending.
Alas, he failed to appreciate the humour.
I therefore am not surprised of these intrusive, and irrelevant questions re house value.
It’s probably because you have reached your “ceiling” for what the bank allows you to spend on your card.
Happened to me recently. I wanted to buy a robot mower online, moved 2,000€ into my C/A a/c. That gave me a total of over 4,000€, only half of which I needed for the mower. C/A refused the transaction. The limit on my card must be about 2,000. I have yet to discover because when I went into the branch to get my ceiling lifted they had no internet and couldn’t do it. So I moved 1,000 via wise to OH and he paid for it (he has a C/A gold card with a higher limit). If/when one is doing DIY etc that needs large amounts from time to ime it’s worth getting your ceiling lifted.
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