Hello Bill and Judy,
Why do you want to find a French bank, your English seems pretty good to me !!
Apart from language difficulties there are other problems. Money laundering checks mean that any financial institution is legally bound to require certified copies of your passports and an original of a utility bill less than three months old to establish that your address is probably genuine.
Anti terrorist legislation in some countries requires that you cannot get or use a cell phone if you do not have a valid address in that country. Some will accept a marina address but others will not. We use a Vodaphone contract for roaming which is becoming much cheaper this year thanks to EU legislation.
We also buy a dongle known as an internet key and buy a data simcard which works very well the snag being that you need a new dongle for each country as one bought from ,say, Vodaphone in Spain will not work in a different country even with that country's Vodaphone simcard. Many marinas have WiFi but, unless it has improved since last year, many have an outrageous charge to get the daily password.
We opened two accounts with Lloyds TSB International in the Channel Islands, one being in sterling and the other in Euros and we have credit or debit cards on both accounts so we can get money out of the "hole in the wall" machines anywhere.
Our accounts with Lloyds are useable by post ,phone and the net but obviously they have a number of checks to keep them secure.
I would imagine that there must be international American banks offering the same sort of service in Europe.
When we moved to Malta and bought a property we later learned that banks are thieves when it comes to transferring currencies, we were not aware that they use outrageous rates of exchange so that though they will only show a charge of £15 for transferring say £500,000 into euros in Malta they use a rate of exchange some 2 or 3% below the official rate whereas if we ask them to transfer £500k to Caxton FX the only cost is the normal Chaps or Swift £15 for the electronic transfer. Caxton will then transfer the money to my Maltese bank with a charge of only about 0.5%.
Some addresses:- ipba@... or pieter.cloete@... and customerservice@...
I suppose that their websites would be similar without the first part of the Email addresses.
Please let me know if you need any more info.
Best wishes, Anne and John, Bali Hai, SM 319

----- Original Message -----
From: richard03801@...
To: amelyachtowners@...
Sent: Sunday, June 20, 2010 1:43 PM
Subject: Re: [Amel] Opening a French Bank Account



Hi we spent 08 in Franch and found that WE COULD NOT open an account or get a Phone. They required a local Street address and would not accept a marina address. We went to banks in a number of cities/ports. Not possible was always the reply. We used our card to get cash at the ATM's.
Good luck. Richard and Joan on Challenge SM209
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

-----Original Message-----
From: "Judy and Bill aboard SV BeBe" <yahoogroups@...>
Sender: amelyachtowners@...
Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2010 02:27:30
To: <amelyachtowners@...>
Reply-To: amelyachtowners@...
Subject: [Amel] Opening a French Bank Account

We will be in the Mediterranean next year, arriving about mid-year and will be there at least 1 year.

We are closely watching the Euro weaken to the dollar, as I am sure a few of you are. While we were in New Zealand, the USD strengthened to 2 times a NZ dollar for a short time. We opened a NZ bank account and wired what we thought we would spend during our stay. We locked-in our exchange rate by transferring dollars to NZ when the NZ dollar was at $0.50 to the USD.

We are thinking about the same sort of plan by taking advantage of the weakening Euro.

We are looking for folks that can recommend banking contacts in France from current, or recent experiences. We need to be able to open an account by email, post, or express courier then wire-transfer funds to the account.

You can contact us directly at BillandJudy"at"svbebe.com

Bill
s/v BeBe, SM2k, #387
Currently Malaysia
Blog: http://www.svbebe.com



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