Hello, at the moment im starting process for portugal golden visa, already signed with law firm, already got my nif, but next step is choosing which bank i should open the account. Bison bank is recommended by my lawyers, but they charge a 0.20% transaction fee (one time only) about 1.000 euros and 0.025% custody fee for the whole amount of capital, which is 600 dlls anually, is that a normal fee %? I have tried getting in touch with millenium bcp to check their fee cost and decide! Would really apprecciate any advice or previous experience
I went with Millenium presicely because of this. They charge 6 EUR per month + 9 EUR per quarter for holding the shares. They also charged a fee for the letter confirming the funds and to transfer the funds. But, overall much cheaper than Bison. That being said, they are difficult to work with. Always asking for new documents and confirmations. Non-responsive on all isssues. And from what i understand, its more difficuct to open an account with them than it was in 2021.
Following, fees are indeed a big factor given the investment amount
I am with MillenniumBCP. I think you missed 2.4% commission on dividend distribution, which, if i understood correctly, Bison does not charge such commission. In a netshall, if you expect 100% dividend/capital gain distribution on 500kEuro fund over who-knows-how-many-years, it will be 12KEuro.
Edit: i checked 2 other PT retail banks, the commission on dividend distribution is quite standard.
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I agree that Bison charges too much. Customer service has been pretty good though. I did try to find a different bank 4 years ago and probably should explore a different option.
You will need to check the fee structures for both BCP and Bison against your specific plans as they are not an easy comparison. Last time I reviewed them, Bison had higher annual custody fees but BCP charged a higher % on exit, which may work out more expensive for you in the long run.
Right now, I have Bison for custody and BCP for transactions. When I applied for GV in 2020, BCP wasn’t offering custody services for foreigners, and Bison had no transaction card, so I needed both banks.
Now I’m planning to close my BCP account and just use Bison. BCP’s frequent demands for foreign clients to provide updated documents proving ID, address, source of funds, proof of assets are time-consuming, and I have read several anecdotes of customers having their assets frozen in the process. BCP will often ignore emails or calls to your branch, even when you pay higher monthly fees for a Prestige account manager, which makes it hard to manage if you are not in Portugal full time. Overall, in my experience, BCP’s customer service has been very poor.
In contrast, Bison will quickly resolve any enquiry by phone or email. The trade-off is Bison doesn’t have ATMs, a mobile app, and isn’t part of the Multibanco system so you can’t use MB Way, so you might find that a little less convenient. I don’t live in Portugal right now so that doesn’t matter to me so much. Bison does now have a Visa Debit card that connects with Apple Pay, so that works fine for day to day transactions when I’m there. And you can pay government invoices from your Bison account, so it works for AIMA fees.
Others on here have also recommended BPI, so that might worth looking into. They are a larger investment bank than Bison and offer both custody and transaction accounts with Multibanco ATM access, but apparently the customer service is better than BCP.