Bison Bank ended 2019 with losses of seven million euros, which represents a slight improvement over the losses of 9.4 million registered in 2018. On the positive side, the positive banking product of 2.4 million euros stands out, ārepresenting a recovery of the bankās operating activity compared to 2018 when the banking product was negative by 125 thousand eurosā.
Jay, based on the paperwork that I recently completed for opening my Millennium account in Portugal, there is indeed depositor insurance akin to the FDIC, but limited to 100k euro per financial institution. So you can achieve a greater level of protection by having multiple accounts at multiple institutions, but multiple accounts at a single bank will be considered a single account for the purposes of depositor insurance.
However , as a practical matter, for a GV investment your PT bank account should only have in excess of 100k for the short period of time prior to it funding your investment, so the exposure to bank failure leading to losses in excess of 100k seems relatively low.
This was our thinking as well. We used Bison Bank, and were also a little apprehensive initially. However, our money was barely at Bison for 2 days. Shortly after receipt at Bison, the bulk of our cash was transferred on to our investment fund.
Noah, is Millenium BCP able to open a securities account to hold the participation units of the fund that you are investing in for the GV? Last I heard (about a month ago), they were not willing to work with US citizens in this matter.
My assumption is yes because Millenium is the bank that my lawyers steered me to and they know I intend to invest via a fund and they have other GV clients invested in funds.
With us, our lawyer vetted many many banks to make sure they accept US investors intend to do investment for the GV. We went with Novo Banco. The bank knew before hand that we want to persue GV via investment. We went through the account set up process. Everything went along fine, and the bank account was set up. When we were about to move forward with the fund subscription, they told the fund manager that they are not able to open a securities account to hold the participation units of the fund for US citizens. The bank completely failed to be transparent with the fund manager as well as our lawyer before we opened an account with them!
The last thing I heard from Novo Banco five weeks ago, after six rounds of back and forth simply inquiring about opening an account as a āUS Personā GV investor, was:
We inform you that your request was duly sent to your branch to be analyzed.
We are entirely at your disposal in order to clarify this or any other matter.
If thereās any collective benefit from your misfortune, itās to save me from bothering to follow up on a dead end!
To anyone that has gone through opening an account with Bison bank, did you really have to fill out the 14 page Know Your Customer form?
It is so excessive and I feel like they shouldnāt need this information to open an account for someone they already know is doing this for the GV. (Or am I just being a difficult american who concerns about privacy?)
Youāre being a difficult American. The bank is being subject to constraints imposed on it by other difficult Americans who are imposing FACTA. This kind of thing is SOP now. Some banks will be more *nal than others but you can expect *ectal inspections, and it goes up the more $ youāre moving because itās more suspicious (so where did you get all that money anyway?). Donāt be surprised if they want tax returns and CVs and bank statements and whatever else - some banks are asking for this now (personal experience).
AFAICT itās getting to a point that you really need to build relationships with banks or other advisory firms so that they can stand for you in KYC situations; you just canāt operate on a pure transactional-efficiency basis.
Do you mean FACTA or FATCA? I think FACTA only involves the 3 credit reporting companies in the US.
They already do have our tax return (proof of SSN) and employment letter indicating annual salary and start date. They also have our bank statement (proof of address). With Novo Banco, they didnāt ask any of these questions, but as you know that didnāt go anywhere.
I know I will have to fill this out because our bank contact says so. I know one person (same bank, different contact) didnāt have to fill out the KYC. I was more curious about how many people had to and how many didnāt because it seems like itās who-you-know in Portugal, which I already expected going in.
Just to put the record straight in case others come looking at this thread thinking that US investors can get a securities account with Millennium BCP: They can not.
Regular bank account? Sure! But not an investment accountā¦
