EU Right to a basic bank account

soirish

From 20 September if you are legally resident in an EU country you are entitled to open a "basic payment account" in any other EU country. Banks cannot refuse your application for a basic payment account just because you don't live in the country where the bank is established.

http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/financial-products-and-services/bank-accounts-eu/index_en.htm

Wanderer78

sparkasse bank here I come!

JTMan

All Irish banks have launched Basic Payment Account products in recent weeks. Most have buried the detail in their website because they do not really want to provide the product.

Basic Payment Accounts do not offer all the same features of standard current accounts but do offer free banking for at least 12 months.

Jim2007

Wanderer78 wrote: »

sparkasse bank here I come!

And what benefit would this be to you???

Such accounts do not pay interest and can charge you a reasonable fee for operating the account. On top of this unless you have a good command of the local language you will discover that in the case of most smaller banks their English cover is only skin deep as the content is bought in from one of the hand full of agencies specialising in providing such content.

Wanderer78

Jim2007 wrote: »

And what benefit would this be to you???

Such accounts do not pay interest and can charge you a reasonable fee for operating the account. On top of this unless you have a good command of the local language you will discover that in the case of most smaller banks their English cover is only skin deep as the content is bought in from one of the hand full of agencies specialising in providing such content.

security, plain and simple. the private banks are not safe, they are too volatile. we re potentially looking at an era of negative interest rates. i would rather have my money in a more secure institution, and it sounds like the sparkasse bank does a pretty good job of that. of course id rather if ireland had its own public banking system but sure thats not the case. obviously if the eu collapsed there would be problems.

Jim2007

Wanderer78 wrote: »

security, plain and simple. the private banks are not safe, they are too volatile. we re potentially looking at an era of negative interest rates.

Sparkassen (there are about 430 of them) usually have T1 ratios of about half that of most European banks, they are about equivalent to US savings and loans (or Irish credit unions) and we know how well that worked out! They are not subject to Basel III and would in any case be unable to meet those rules, but more important is that they are dependant on the Landesbanken and they are very shaky, Bremer Landesbank being a case in point.

If you want security you look for banks with high double digit T1 ratios.