877 opening bank account

Hi Rick

I think opening an Italian account online from Britain would be very difficult.

But if you can get to London, looks like it's possible. You might want to send a private message to flyingveepixie - who on Feb 17 in the Legal forum wrote:

"I had no problem opening my account with Unicredit Banca. I live here in the UK and only needed my Codice Fiscale, 2 utility bills, and my passport. The biggest hassle about it was the fact that I had to make a day trip to London to present them in person as they wouldn't accept them through the post and also needed to get a signature from me. Still, it was hardly torture."

If you haven't got a codice fiscale yet... I think you can get one from the Italian consulate.

You may need to get your skates on though - I would guess getting your codice and opening an Italian account from London could take a while.

Best of luck

Mike Johnson

Forgot to mention that your Italian estate agent can get you a codice fiscale too.

Mike

ciao a tutti
unfortunately it is not possible to open an italian bank account from the uk as we were told by the unicredit banca, there are tons of signatures required to open the account, if you have been using a lawyer as we did try and get him to make an appointment and go with you to the bank when you open the account ours did and it cut down the amount of waiting time tremendously, i know this does not help much but use it as another excuse to go to italy, oh and as far as the account goes they give you your pin card number there and then and also the pin code to access your account online we waited another week for our bancomat card and our first statement arrived a couple of weeks later, who says the italian banks are not efficient.

codice fiscale can be arranged by your estate agent in italy alternatively if you want you can go to the italian consulate in the uk london, our nearesrt was manchester, contact them by phone and they will send you the application form via e mail then go in person for a same day codice. hope this helps ciao marco

Hi Rick,
We managed to open an account (to the point that we got an Iban number and account number etc to enable us to send money ahead of us) via e-mail and fax. We then needed to re-sign the documents we had faxed over whilst in the UK when we got back to Italy -but that was really just a formality.
This was with Banca Carime and I suspect the ease was due to the fact that we bought in a little place where almost everyone knows everyone else and we told the bank (via their London agent) that the Estate agent had a copy of our passports and codice fiscali - and had obviously met us so knew we were who were purported to be (and I suspect the bank manager and estate agent knew and respected each other?).
The Italian requirements for opening a bank account are no more onerous than in the Uk these days - its all to do with 'knowing your customer' and money-laundering and increased security (esp. since 9/11) and given the events of the last weeks in London I don't think its unreasonable to expect to have to jump through a few hoops these days :(
Anyway, I have nothing but praise for Banca Carime so far but I think they are fairly localised and we are in the south so they maybe don't cover your area (although they are a part of the larger BPU Gruppa and have affiliations in Ancona, Bergamo and Milan).
[url]http://www.comindustria.it/[/url]
Let me know if I can help you further with any more info about our banking experiences,
Best wishes, Lesley

I wouldn't have thought you would be allowed to open an account online. We are moving to Umbria at the end of August and opened our account in June. We signed our signatures a total of 68 times!!! One last thing, when you go to the bank to open the account, do ensure that you are there first thing in the morning as the 'meeting' is done on a first comes first served basis - we couldn't schedule an actual time. Otherwise you could be there all day!!

Yes it's true, I did open an account with unicredit banca from here in the UK. That, however, was a year ago and since then my contact at the bank has vanished and the branch in London seems to have closed so I'm afraid I can't offer much advice to you on how to proceed. If I was you I would go back over to Italy and open an account with the post office as it seems to offer the best deal with a minimum of fees. I will probably do this myself eventually if my Italian ever improves enough as I'm not at all happy with my Unicredit account which has a monthly standing charge of 10 euros, doesn't pay a penny in interest to me, and charges me outrageously for every single transaction I make, be it deposit, withdrawal, direct debit or whatever.

Hi Rick,

Whilst you do not need a Italian lawyer when buying a property it can make life a whole lot easier.
We recently bought a property in the Marche, the only time we had to go to Italy during the whole process ( After finding the property and making the offer ) was to sign the Final Contract and collect the keys.

If you give the solicitor the power of proxy then he should be able to sort everything for you without having to visit Italy. Ours obtained the Codisce Fiscale and opened a bank account with the local bank.This enabled us to transfer the money in time for the completion. He also prearranged for the cheques and cash to be ready for collection on the big day and all we had to do was sign the reams of paperwork in the bank when we arrived to collect the money.

Italy is not like other European states like the Uk, Germany or France. You dont NEED anything to get any doccument. However you will be asked for many things. Technicaly you just need your codice fiscale and passport to open a bank account or post office account however they might ask for more at diffrent banks etc. However they are likely to ask for less on a diffrent day. This is because A - they dont really know what is needed, and B - they cant be bothered to deal with people that just speak English (if it seems like hard work they will just try to get rid of you).
This I have found to be the same when trying to get other Italian doccuments such as permisso de soggiorno where one day i was asked for a set of papers, then at another place a contradictory set of papers..... and finally i went with Italian friends who managed to get us everything we needed with hardly any of the paper NEEDED.
In conclusion to get anthing done you need luck and someone who speaks Italian and is used to this system is a big bonus.
Please excuse the spelling...am in a rush

We had a similar tale to those recited above. Estate Agent actually opened a bank account with local branch (not the bank we preferred and he couldn't arrange a PO account - I think some side deal clouded his preference) without any dox bar CF. But it all worked OK, we signed dox when visiting to sign the purchase contract, picked up drafts (which we had arranged beforehand).

Despite guidance/advice from elsewhere we were unable to convince the postmistress we could hold a BancoPoste account - research suggests this is the cheapest way to bank in Italy, the account can be operated on line and will pay ICI etc.

In the UK we were offered the possibility to open an account with Banca delle Marche, faxing dox etc and signing the originals when we visit but in the end the nearest branch was not particularly local to us. NB - we did manage to get a reduction in proposed fees/charges; worth asking. Free banking seems to be a phenomenon of UK.

HSBC will issue Euro drafts on an Italian affiliates account for you, but the locals seemed wary of the prospect so we didn't go down that route - but as the drafts are on Banco di Milano (I think) it seemed an unwarranted worry on their part.

Aren`t Unicredit Banca part of Abbey National? There might be some mileage in trying Abbey in the UK. We paid by bankers draft which went to a local bank in Italy (who incidentally wouldn`t give us an account as we were non-resident at the time!) and they just `handled` the money & transferred it on to the right person at the right time. I`m sure it`s possible to buy your house this way, even if you don`t actually have a bank account in Italy.

i believe that you can now open a estero post office account but not sure if you can do that online the rules have been changed recently. one thing you could do if you are using a lawyer is ask him if you can transfer the money to his account to hold before the purchase.

[quote=The Smiths in Puglia]Aren`t Unicredit Banca part of Abbey National? There might be some mileage in trying Abbey in the UK. We paid by bankers draft which went to a local bank in Italy (who incidentally wouldn`t give us an account as we were non-resident at the time!) and they just `handled` the money & transferred it on to the right person at the right time. I`m sure it`s possible to buy your house this way, even if you don`t actually have a bank account in Italy.[/quote]

[QUOTE=Poetica]
HSBC will issue Euro drafts on an Italian affiliates account for you, but the locals seemed wary of the prospect so we didn't go down that route - but as the drafts are on Banco di Milano (I think) it seemed an unwarranted worry on their part.[/QUOTE]

The reason they don't like them is that they are not the 'open' type of Banker's Draft that can be re-assigned to a 3rd party without passing through the vendor's bank account [tax 'fiddle']

give yourself plenty of time to open the account - it took ages for ours to be opened - I am now thinking of closing it now I have the house as it costs a fortune to keep money in - they dont give interest just charge you for keeping money in it!
Pameal