French Bank Account

[BBond]

Hello

 

We intend to move to France early next year and have heard conflicting advise about opening a French bank account, we intend to take a long term rental there until we find the right house to buy.  I have looked at Barclays and their charges seem very high.  I have looked at CA Britline but will not meet all their criteria, we have both retired early and will live off savings until our pensions start, so we can not show any proof of income. ( A large part of the savings will be the sale of a UK property).  Is there any one in a similar situation who has opened a French bank account? If so can you please let me know which bank it was with

 

Many thanks

[Nearly Retired (I am now)]

We simply wandered in to a Credit Agricole branch in our nearest town and asked to make an appointment to open an account. There was no way that our (lack of) command of French in those days would have allowed us to make a telephone call ! We came back at the appointed hour with plenty of ID, spent a good hour or more setting it all up and soon got a cheque book and card sent to our UK address.

We now have a good contact in the bank who will happily take calls and faxes from us about our banking matters. We both speak different versions of franglais but always get what's needed sorted out. It's so much better than any relationship I have with our UK bank

[BBond]

Hi NR

THank you for you reply

Did you need to have any proof of income? did you need proof of UK address or French address?  We will put alot of things in storeage and it would be good to know exactly what we will need

 

[kimg]

i did the same as neally, worked for me, who the manager and i struggled to communicate, tho boy did she laugh when i mentioned free banking

kim

[Nearly Retired (I am now)]

BBond,

No - we didn't need to provide evidence of income. We were just asked if the money for the house we were buying was coming from savings and we verbally confirmed. We showed our passports and paperwork (I can't remember precisely what now) about our proposed house purchase and then showed a British Gas bill as evidence of our UK address. I couldn't believe that a British Gas bill would be sufficient / proper evidence for a french bank, but it was enough. We might have shown a couple of our HSBC statements too.

Since then we set up an account for our undergraduate daughter who was about to spend a year in Paris and it was even easier.

When our current account gets more than a couple of thousand Euros in it we get a call to ask us if we'd like to transfer it into a saving account which the bank lady also set up for us. All in all - a brilliant service which costs us €3.60 a month.