UK/French Banks operating Euro Accounts

[kennyh]

Situation is

An aquaintance (french but living in UK for all (including tax) purposes) is coming into a French inheritance and will receive euros. She has a french bank account (don't know who with) but believes her bank doesn't operate outside of France.

Does anyone know of French Banks that also operate in the UK?

[Stan Streason]

There must be many but you can also get a euro account from any of the leading UK banks.

[Pickles]

[quote user="kennyh"]An aquaintance (french but living in UK for all (including tax) purposes) is coming into a French inheritance and will receive euros. She has a french bank account (don't know who with) but believes her bank doesn't operate outside of France.

Does anyone know of French Banks that also operate in the UK?[/quote]

I'm not sure what the problem is here: if she has the inheritance paid into her French account, she can contact them by letter to give them instructions as to what to do with it if she does not visit France. French banks will happily send statements to UK addresses. Depending on which bank it is, she probably would be able to operate the account over the internet ... or am I missing something here? Where is she intending to spend the money?

Regards

Pickles

[kennyh]

Thanks Pickles

She's probably overlooked the internet aspect: but will the UK arm of the french bank readily change the currency into sterling and are there really a significant number of French banks operating in UK?

[PaulT]

She might be better off using one of the currency exchange companies to change the euros in to pounds and pay it in to a UK bank

[Pickles]

[quote user="kennyh"]She's probably overlooked the internet aspect: but will the UK arm of the french bank readily change the currency into sterling and are there really a significant number of French banks operating in UK?[/quote]

Aha! so she does not want to keep the money as € then.

The French bank does not need to have a UK arm. She can either:

1) pay the money into her French bank account (in France, either in person or sending through the cheque with a duly-completed paying-in slip) and then instruct them to send the money as sterling to her normal UK sterling bank account, and then do as she pleases from that; or

2) as Paul (P2) has suggested, get the money transferred directly by the notaire involved in the succession to one of the money transfer specialists who will then transfer it on to her UK bank account, probably at better exchange rates and with lower transmission costs than option 1. This option would probably require her to write to the notaire to give him/her the precise instructions of where to send it and authorise the transfer, but this is nothing difficult.

Regards

Pickles

[andyh4]

As pickles has said nothing difficult - all she needs is here IBAN (account number 22 odd digits) and BIC (SWIFT Bank code) codes for her UK account.

[tom.daniel]

in my experience there are 2 ways for her to do it

1) as mentioned above get the money sent from the notaire stright to a broker and they wil wire it across and deposit the sterling into her account. The only roblem is that there is no flexibility in when you choose the rate (maybe one or 2 days)

2) Open a EUR account with her UK bank. get the money in there, then she can move it across the pounds whenever she wants

It depends on how soon she needs the pounds available.

As other posters have mentined even if she puts the euros to a uk account to use a broker, as she will get a better rate for the transfer then the bank

[Gastines]

I believe Notaires fight shy of putting money into Exchange Company accounts and prefer to pay into directly into an account with the beneficiary's name.

Regards.

[tom.daniel]

A friend of mine had their notaire put money straight into the broker's account no problem, i suppose it depends on the relationship with the French bank and how easily you will be able to make the transfer.

The easiest could be for the noaire to send it stright to a UK Euro account