Bank account in france

[ac]

Hello to forum readers

We are shortly to purchase property in the Manche region.

Can we open a french bank account from uk, how long does this process take.

any advice and reccomendations will be appreciated (not britline)

Thanks

AC

[Llwyncelyn]

Not Britline and whilst I am not necessarily an avid supporter why not?

[alnmike]

Britline serve our purposes as second home owners well. We opened the

account well before we had purchased and use the on-line service all

the time.

You could try Barclays but when we wanted an account, they made it very difficult and we are Barclays UK customers!! [:D]

[booboo]

try the english staff at ca-paris.fr   i'm very happy with my account there which gives me internet banking too.

[cooperlola]

Can't say I have any complaints about Britline either.  However, when you're over here, it's quite easy just to pop into your local branch of any bank and open an account, all they need is a passport and an address.  Then you can log-on to their internet service (most French banks have one) and service the account from the UK.  In hindsight, that it was I should have done, but probably like you, I didn't have the time when I was going through a sale and a purchase process.  When I was in the UK, somebody recommended Citibank - you could try them too.

[booboo]

citibank are in the process of closing their branches.....

[Dick Smith]

We have an account at Credit Agricole (Mortain), it's a pretty efficient branch (although never tested by a real problem) and the whole process took well under an hour - in fact someone opened an account over the counter the last time we were in there. I really can't remember what documentation we had to take, though, and it was before the present concerns about terrorist money laundering etc.

[Iceni]

4 years ago we opened our account with BP. We needed cash, passports and the attestation from the notaire that we had just bought our dwelling. Whole thing took about 30 minutes - mostly chatting.

John

not

 

[LEO]

[quote user="ac"]Hello to forum readers We are shortly to purchase property in the Manche region. Can we open a french bank account from uk, how long does this process take. any advice and reccomendations will be appreciated (not britline) Thanks AC[/quote]

Surely someone on the forum can answer the original question ?

yes you can or, no you cannot, open an account with a French bank ,whilst you are still in UK.

[Sunday Driver]

AC already answered the question in his own original post - Credit Agricole is a French bank which offers French bank accounts to UK residents - through it's Britline brand. [8-)]

So, yes, you can open a French bank account from the UK.

 

 

 

[Ron Avery]

- Credit Agricole is a French bank which offers French bank accounts to UK residents - through it's Britline brand.

 So, yes, you can open a French bank account from the UK, or you can do a day trip and open one in person in Calais. How to open one from the UK , first I would suggest that a search is done, of "opening a bank account",  this topic has been done to death on here.  Try  http://www.completefrance.com/cs/forums/626087/ShowPost.aspx as a starter.  However, AC may not want to use Britline, if they speak good French it is not necessary, it is also based in Normandy and as we all know CA is not a national bank and so it is not easy to transfer money etc from other banks including other CAs to a Britline account.

What I did was go to Calais, open an account with Credit Lyonnais.  When I moved here,  I opened an account with the local CA branch in the village and closed the CL account.  And, before anybody chucks in their 3d worth, I like CA Nord midi-pyrenees,  I have had no trouble with them and I have just transferred my insurances to CA because at long last the insurance market in France is getting competitive.