Bank for US Person Investing in Funds - Bison, BIG, Atlantico Premium

Residencies & citizenships Portugal Golden Visa 🇵🇹
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While it may be too late I’m still going to try the investment in IMGA Portugal funds for the GV.

As a US person I understand my options for banks to hold the investments are Bison, BIG, or Atlantico. Is that correct?

Crawling this forum I see a lot of good comments about Bison but when I try to open an account online it has me send an e-mail to an account at Bison Bank which bounced - not comforting. Does anyone have a working contact with Bison?

BIG’s site is all in Portuguese.

Atlantico seems to be the best option as Bordr, the NIF procurement service I’m using, has the ability to open the accounts.

Can someone confirm Atlantico is FATCA compliant for US persons? Any negatives with Atlantico?

Thanks!

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Try reaching out to Nuno da Rocha Correia at Bison.

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Note, my info is from 2021.

I am US Resident so same situation and was looking at funds in 2021 (but ultimately didn’t proceed beyond bank account opening).

I opened an account with Bison due to US FACTA compliance, but Bordr was recommending Atlantico as they were also compliant and Bison was really busy at the time.

I would STRONGLY recommend 2 things:

  • Work with someone IN Portugal who has contacts in the banks
  • Ask the bank their processing timelines, they could vary from a few days to several weeks so your choice of bank might be heavily influenced by this

I didn’t open up a Funds based account in March as I went Residential this year but Atlantico was pretty smooth opening myself for a non-Funds account, but a Funds account might be a lot slower for regulatory reasons.

Is it too late?
Perhaps, it depends what you’ve already done. Whilst you wait for Bank Account to open, if you line up everything else (Get your docs like Background Check + Apostille Requested, Select & Start Uploading Docs to Laywer, Select Investment and maybe send them a deposit via WIRE) then you can potentially have an SEF Application by end of April.

Fingers crossed they decide to put a favorable date in new laws like 1 May/1 June/etc. as the cutoff date, I know they are talking about 16 Feb, but with all the constitutional talk around, they might just be “all talk” and slip in 1 May into the bill to avoid constitutional issues, meanwhile their “tough talk” spooked away investors which was their real goal.

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