Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Banking’ Category

When I put on my post about opening an American bank as a non-resident, I was amazed at the number of people who checked it out and of those quite a number would like to know how to open a Swiss account.

Opening accounts in both America and Switzerland used to be very easy but with increasing anti-terrorism legislation around the world many banks felt that they could no longer cope with the additional identity checks that the legislation seems to require of them. I say “seems” because it doesn’t really require any more of them than it does of someone living next door to the branch but they generally don’t make a whole lot of money on non-resident accounts anyway so it’s easier for them to use “the law” as an excuse to say no to non-residents.

However, for most “normal” countries all you actually need is a proof of address (ie an electricity or landline phone bill) plus a copy of your passport (usually this must be certified). More obscure countries sometimes ask for an apostile which is more of a hassle to provide.

For America, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, the only things required are the proof of address and passport. In the case of America, 9/11 has meant that the banks prepared to open an account with minimal hassle has reduced drastically but includes Bank of America, Citibank, HSBC and, the ever-present, e-trade. Aside from e-trade, it’s easier to open an account with one of these banks if you already have an account with them in your own country and you may have one already as Bank of America issues a lot of credit cards in Europe under the MBNA name.

In the case of the UK, it’s easier to open a non-resident account with one of the branches in the offshore islands (Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man or Gibraltar) as they are more accustomed to dealing with non-resident accounts. Don’t worry about that “offshore” tag as those islands banking systems are fully integrated with the mainland.

For Switzerland it’s generally fairly easy though some banks will now refuse non-resident accounts due to the expense of running them whilst others will charge you extra. You cannot open an account with SwissPoste these days, despite numerous websites listing it as a possibility and indeed charging you for the privilege of providing you with the information. The major banks (UBS, Credit Suisse) will still permit non-resident accounts and are unlikely to stop doing so as a large proportion of their client-base is non-resident but now charge around SF 75 per year to maintain the accounts if you’re non-resident. However, if you just want a Swiss account by far the best appears to be via SwissQuote which is a free multi-currency account and offers the option of a debit card too (there’s a charge for the debit card).

What are Certified & Apostilles? To get a document certified, you usually just need to go along to your bank and have them stamp the copy and write “original seen” on it. Sometimes banks ask for it to be certified by a lawyer but usually a bank is sufficient for them. An apostille is a certification that the person doing the original certification is known and what’s asked for usually is a “state-level” apostille. This means, usually, that you need to send off your passport to the department of your home government which deals with international affairs (usually called the State Department but is the Foreign & Commonwealth Office in the UK) who will provide you with an apostilled copy.

If you’re interesting in more details on these options, either subscribe to this category here (international-banking) or check out the information on our Expat Banking site. I’ll be slowly but surely working through the various countries here and on that site, the next being Switzerland and after that probably the offshore British islands.

Rental prices tend to lag the corresponding rises in house prices, essentially because rental contracts are generally 6 to 12 months in duration.

With the incredibly strong rise in house prices in Northern Ireland over the last year to 18 months it could only be expected that the rents being asked for would make a move after the customary time lag. Now, the house prices have levelled off at the moment but that’s not stopped the rents starting to shift upwards.

For example, in one estate which we have a vested interest in, a typical house was £130k in September 2006 vs £225k now. The increase in rents being asked is also heading upwards over that time from a typical £425 last year to £495 now. So far that’s only a 16% rental increase compared to the 73% price rise but I suspect that it’s merely a taster of things to come from the landlords as they test the water for reactions to that rise. Certainly if the prices of the houses resume their progress upwards I would be surprised if there wasn’t a certain amount of catching up happening this time next year with the rents.

If you think that British ATMs are complicated beasties, you should look at some of the Spanish ones.

For one thing, they’re easily twice the size of the UK ones. That’s not because they’re ancient but because they have seemingly millions of different functions. Whereas in the UK, a bank ATM has basically three slots (card, money and receipt) and a UK building society machine adds two extra slots to deal with deposits, the Spanish variety has all kinds of slots and it takes a few seconds even to find where you’ve to stick your card in.

These days ATMs are quite sophisticated and generally work out what language you speak from the card you’ve inserted rather than asking you which language you’d like. However, that’s frequently a step too far when it’s an expat wielding the card as you may well not be using a card from your own country when you’re on holiday or just travelling.

It’s certainly something that the French machines don’t allow for. The machines usually ask you what language you want but revert to French if you use a French card regardless of which language you select!

We received an interesting e-mail from one of the European offices looking after consumer affairs last night.

They’re writing on behalf of a Spanish couple who booked with us last July but who didn’t turn up.

Ordinarly, that would mean we’d have billed them as a no-show but at the time the booking system had a technical problem so we weren’t receiving their reservation e-mails and therefore didn’t know that they were coming. Anyway, net effect was that we didn’t charge them although under the terms of the reservation system we were entitled to.

They’ve gone to this European office with their booking confirmation that has a note of the two nights booked and EUR 98 charge. Except, that it isn’t a change: it’s just a note of what they would have to pay.

The Spanish guy in the European office doesn’t understand that at all. They quoted their credit card number and they’ve a statement with EUR 98 on it, they didn’t get their accommodation (because they went to the wrong place) but he believes that they’ve paid it as do they.

Usually the Spanish are much more Internet-savvy than the French but in this area they’re just as far behind in that they assume that they’ve paid when they quote a credit card number yet it’s only used for a guarantee.

I suspect that it’ll run for a bit as he sent another e-mail this morning threatening to translate everything and sent it to the French consumer protection authorities to demand the refund of this EUR 98 which they’ve not paid.

There seems to be something of a drift from issuing Visa cards to issuing Mastercards in the UK at the moment thereby reversing the previous trend which was to only issue Visa cards.

Although it doesn’t really matter which you have in the UK, it can matter a lot when you go on holiday and generally it’s best to be carrying both Visa and Mastercard abroad. In that respect the switch of my Halifax Visa card to a Mastercard suits me as that gives me a Mastercard credit card from them and a Visa debit card but others could easily find themselves with a Maestro card and a Mastercard which isn’t a good combination as Maestro isn’t nearly as useful as Visa debit and you’re left with two cards on the same system which isn’t good either.

Not a catastrophe for sure but do make sure that you have both varieties of card handy well in advance of your next holiday.