Minimum Bank Balance

[Marie_D]

Our French Barclays Bank manager insists it is a legal requirement for non-residents to keep a minimum balance of 8,000 euros' in french bank accounts. This seems rather a lot. Does anyone have any advice/experience of this themselves? Thanks.

[Anton Redman]

LAST EDITED ON 06-Jan-03 AT 12:17 PM (GMT)

This may be what Barclays has decided but it is not the law. When I had over 10,000 euros, in anticipation of sterling weakening, in my French account the bank said I should move it to a interest bearing account.

Have a read through the Minimum Balance thread below in this forum. In my experience and judgeing by the locations where they have branches in France the major UK clearers are only interested in high value business customers or maintaining services for the very wealthy.

[Adriana]

>Our French Barclays Bank manager insists it is a legal requirement
>for non-residents to keep a minimum balance of 8,000 euros'
>in french bank accounts.

Nonsense! We have never more than around 2000 euro's in our French account (on account of it not earning any interest) and have had no problem whatsoever.

Ask your bank manager to point out the clause in the law he's talking about.

Cheers,
Adriana.

[Coco]

>Our French Barclays Bank manager insists
>it is a legal requirement
>for non-residents to keep a
>minimum balance of 8,000 euros'
>in french bank accounts.
>
What utter RUBBISH!!!! We've had a compte d'etranger for 4 years now and never in that whole time have we had anywhere near that amount of money in it. In fact, just recently we accidently went overdrawn (which terrified the life out of me because I heard it was against the law and you could be stopped from holding an account in the future. All that happened was we got a very polite letter (much more so than any letter I've ever received from a UK bank) asking us to get the account back in the black within 30 days.

Change banks!!!


Coco

[moirac0mfort]

We bought our house last year as a holiday home. Opened an account with the French Banque Populaire.We put in whatever amount we need to cover our bills. No one has ever said there was a minimum.
Moira

[val2]

Well I know what I would say to this bank. Find yourself a better one that treats it's customers better. Never liked Barclays in the UK so they obviously aren't any better in France.

[Alan E]

After some discussion on this forum I decided to leave my account with only the equivalent of 30p in it for over a month. I went over last week to deposit some cash to give me a decent balance. The lady at the desk deposited my money and then started a long monologue, I thought "oh dear I'm being told off for the small balance". It took me a couple of seconds to realise that she was trying to sell me legal costs insurance! We made our excuses and left.

I should find another bank.

Best Regards

Alan E.