I’m retired and hoping to sell my UK house next year and move to France - initially to rent until I have a carte de séjour in my hand - at which point I hope to start looking for a house to buy.
To stay under the FSCS safety limit of £85000 and since I will be renting for more than the 6 month safety window, I will inevitably have to hold multiple UK bank accounts for some time to accommodate the proceeds from my house sale …
What are the logistics of this ?
How long before my UK banks want me to close my accounts because I am no longer resident ?
That aside, presumably there is an equivalent scheme in France so when I come to buy a house in France I will have a safe window enabling me to transfer sufficient funds into a French bank account ?
And might I be looking to have multiple bank accounts in France ?
I wonder if I need to employ an expert to handle all of this - including the joy of declaring taxable income in France…
If you open your UK bank accounts before you move, you will generally be able to retain them afterwards, depending which banks you use. I can only speak personally regarding the Coop and the Nationwide, which is where my accounts are and I know there are problems with some of the others (Barclays? Lloyds?) but the banks themselves will be able to tell you if you ask them.
I have more than one bank account here in France as well, so that is also quite feasible.
OH and I have not been resident in the UK for 16 years and between us have an HSBC account, joint and separate First Direct accounts and a NatWest account. At no point has any of our banks asked us to close an account. We cannot get new services from our UK banks but existing ones are still firmly in place.
We each of us also have C/A accounts which we opened on the advice of our estate agent before we moved to France - but this was pre-Brexit and it was easier then.
Please note if you have an Other Half and will only be opening one account for the two of you, make sure the wording is right for your two names so that whoever goes first the other will be able to continue to use the account - someone else needs to tell you what the wording needs to be (we have two separate a/cs so it’s not the same for us)
When you open a French bank account enquire about also opening Livret A account/s (one per person, so two possible on a joint account; these have a limit of €22,950, currently pay 3% interest tax free and interest paid can be added to the maximum amount. Their other plus is that the money can be withdrawn instantly, without prior notice.
Thanks all, I’m somewhat reassured by that …
Next issue will be how long to lock up my cash with the interest rates so favourable - interest from the house sale will effectively be covering my rent in France …
I can see I’m going to have to make sure the banks start sending me paper statements well in advance of the visa procedure.
Meanwhile there will be the joy of finding an AirBnB that will allow me to set up a rental in the area I want to live from the UK …
I will need to see if I can still open a CA account from here …
It’s easy to open a CA Britline account even post-Brexit. Most UK financial institutions allow (encourage) customers to turn off paper statements, which i did a while ago, and CA B are happy to accept pdfs, and scanned copies of anything you have on paper (like council tax).
I think the logical approach you’re taking will pay dividends, especially when you get to that one thing you din’t expect!
If you get a long stay visa for more than 12 months, (VLS-TS), you have to validate it within 3 months of arrival, and that then becomes your CDS until you get the actual card on renewal 12 months later.
Note that you will have to renew every year (there are some exceptions) and you will become a permanent resident after 5 years.
I would add Yorkshire Bank/Virgin Money to the UK bank which has not closed our accounts but also that we had a terrible time years ago with CA and instead have long used Banque Postale in France. One thing to remember is that, apart from Banque Postale, I think all French banks are regional not national which means you may find yourself dealing with a different bank when travelling. For us we found with CA that it took several days for money we paid in only 100 kms away to reach our account.
Lastly and very importantly, to add to what @SuePJ noted, if you want to open a joint account make sure it is in the name of M ou Mme, not M et Mme. The first you can use after a partner dies, the second means the opposite for quite some time I believe.
BNP here in Occitanie insisted our joint account had to be closed after my partner’s demise. We had taken great care to have our names as ‘ou’ not ‘et’ on the account so that I could keep on using it.
They kept saying this over at least 5 years while I kept it open. But on the few occasions I was dealing with them over the 5 years (probably more) about other things they kept bringing it up and saying a joint account could no longer be operated by one partner. Interestingly they couldn’t close it without me signing documents for them to do so, it seemed, and it was still able to have transactions.
Eventually they got their way. They were always ready to open another account for me, this was not the issue. Their issue seemed to be that a joint account is a different type of account so couldn’t be kept… or something.
I detest the French banking system, let’s just say I value efficiency, fair charging and customer orientation. Perhaps I’ll change my mind as I come ro understand more of these things in France.
Always a difficult time, dealing with the death… but I think the bank was trying to be helpful…
and there’s a great deal of difference between them trying to move you gently to a sole-named account… and those banks which refuse to let the surviving spouse/partner touch the money which is in joint names eg “M XYZ et Mme ABC…”
30 percent tax + social charges so a third more than the UK …
France is a mixed bag, tax-wise …
I’m already down quite a few quid because my modest LG pension is taxed in the UK.
My SIL complicated things a bit more by suggesting that if my house is not only mortgageable but rentable sometime next year (lots of work ahead), and the housing market suggests it makes sense, I might have a letting agent take it over for a year and THEN sell …
Apparently in France that’s taxed at 20 percent until I hit the next tax band at 27478 …
If I choose that option I will definitely need a financial advisor…
EDIT :–
Is UK rental income taxable in France?
Although UK rental income and government service pensions aren’t directly subject to French tax, if they are applicable to you, it will still be required for you to include them as part of your taxable income. This will be followed by a credit being given for the French tax and social charges liability
Be careful when you sell (timing wise)… if you are letting it out, while you are Resident in France… the UK house might well not be considered your Main Residence by French Tax Folk (fair comment) and you will be slammed with even more taxes…
Just throwing this thought into the mix…
others will possibly/probably know more about this than I do…
EDIT: If you will have serious money on the sale of your property… or whatever… it might well be worth using a Professional Financial Advisor who is up to speed with French Taxes etc…
Paying a little now, might save you a lot in the long run… just thought.
I hope I’ve understood you’re asking about depositor protection arrangements in France. Apologies if I’ve misunderstood. Absolutely there is a similar deposit protection scheme here in France to the UKs. A limit of 100000€ reimbursed per individual client per bank. The same limit applies whether you hold 1 account or multiple accounts. Reimbursement within 7 days of banking collapse. (Relevant to you perhaps, there is a really useful raising of the limit to 500000€ for sums from the sale of a property provided it’s deposited less than 3 months before the failure of said bank). There are also similar, though lower separate protections (approx 70000) for (very common in France) Assurance Vie savings. No AV institution have failed since the early 1990s in France I believe.
You can have up to £2 million in a UK NS&I direct saver. It currently pays 3.65% and is guaranteed by the government. If it’s a joint account they guarantee £4 million
Thanks
I suppose the complication regarding “sale of property” is that I will have sold in the UK and will be transferring the proceeds later - most likely from several UK banks into a single French bank… or I could spice up the mix by transferring it into several french banks and then consolidate it into one for the sale …
And I have yet to negotiate the joy of currency transfer.
Anyway, I now have at least 6 months of work ahead of me here - my BIL conveniently retired and I am employing him to do the skilled work involved in converting this house into something mortgageable…
A shame it’s for someone else, but at least there’s less chance of me messing the place up again…
The properties I’m seeing in France in the area where I want to live need very little doing to them
That is for UK tax residents only I think so would have to be opened before the OP moves to France, whether he could keep it after the move would also have to be investigated.
I think that may be true for all NS&I products? I had to get rid of savings certificates and premium bonds when I moved here in order to comply with the regulations…
