Step by Step Guide to Changing your Bank in France

[mint]

Bonjour, everybody

Have searched and found lots and lots of posts about changing your bank in France.  Perhaps, the info is too much and too varied to enable me to easily glean the stuff I really need to know.

Have decided to change our bank ASAP.  Have changed banks once before but then we were still living in the UK and, as I recall, it involved writing 2 letters and at least 3 phone calls to the "old bank" before they'd close the account.

So, can someone spell out for me what has worked for them?

Do I call at the bank, write a letter, (write a letter and call at the bank with it?)

Then, I need to contact everybody (only 2 organisations) with whom I have DDs, right?

Then I contact CPAM and the Mutuelle people with the new details?

If I opted for, say, a Post Office bank account, how long approximately, before the new account is up and running?

Have I missed out anything critical?

I know I can find all this out by trial and error on my own but I am laid up with some sort of flu bug and it would help tremendously if you could give me the benefit of your suggestions.  I'd like to be able to get all the info beforehand so that I could then get this sorted as soon as I am able to leave the house.

Thank you one and all! 

 

[suein56]

Absolutely no idea about changing banks in France, but have done it often in the UK, so to make your life simpler make sure you open the new account well before you close the old one.

I do know from experience that the current account from La Poste is pretty nifty - ours took about 10 days to be up and running - it is cheap and easy  to run and very much geared for online usage.

Sue [:)]

[Benjamin]

This was what we did last year when we changed banks. It might not be the way a French person would do it but we decided to leave as little to chance as possible.

We first of all opened our new account in person with a small deposit. We were provided with blank letters to all of the normal people that  people pay by direct debit (EDF, Water, CPAM etc). We then waited until we got our new cards and cheque book.

At this point we chose a convenient time in the month when we had paid all of the DD's and wrote to our existing bank and took the letter in by hand. We waited whilst they read our instructions and agreed that they understood what we were doing. We also included with the letter a RIB for our new account and told them to transfer the balance.

We made sure that the letters were sent off to EDF etc in plenty of time for them to change our details within their systems. A lot of these companies allow you to change bank details on their sites yourselves but not all.

It worked for us.  [:D]

[mint]

Many, many thanks, Sue and Benjamin for your straightforward and prompt answers.

Will get on to this as soon as I am able to get out of the house. 

[Lou]

We changed our accounts from CA Britline to the local Credit Agricole when we moved over.

The new bank did everything, took a list of direct debits and notified all the people, including transferring the balance of the old account to the new one. I don't think there were any problems or mistakes (unless I've blanked them out!) - perhaps we were lucky??!  I don't think it was anything to do with it being both CA either.

Lou

Edit: I think we did have to write to the old bank though to tell them what we were doing, though I think the new bank provided the letter and we signed it