Replacing Millennium BCP to another bank due to high fees

This is exactly what I did, as it is impotant to have backups. In the meantime I also need to support my second bank, hahaha.

Yep, I have a Bison acc for custody of my fund shares, Thankfully Bison only runs these checks once a year, at most. And they now have a virtual card for Apple Pay, so that can be used for day-to-day banking. The hitch is I originally used the BCP acc to transfer money to buy my fund shares, so I need their documentation to prove that purchase for ARI renewals. Once I’m done with ARI, I’ll close the BCP acc for good, oh happy day …

If you are an ARI by direct property purchase like me, my solicitor said to keep them just until you get your first card or pay the DUC, and then terminate them…

No, I’m invested in a VC fund so likely different rules. My lawyer (who admittedly is very cautious) said to keep it open because for ARI renewals I may periodically need to prove the shares were purchased with funds sent directly from a Portuguese bank account. It’s possible the bank would still provide the documentation if I closed the account, but not worth the risk or added hassle.

exactly same in my case.

Has anyone on this forum actually replaced the bank that custodies their fund shares?

My current bank and I have a significant dispute.

I think it is impossible. My fund has a condition that all participants must use Millenium BCP as all activities of the fund are monitored financially by Millenium BCP.

The bad thing is that I hate Millenium and I do not have good relation with them.

The good thing about is that Millenium wanted to close my bank account. They intented to block my account seriously. But then they told me they could not because of the Fund. If they blocked my account, that would be illegal because the it evaded the Fund’s participant units/shares which I was owning. So having shares with Fund saved me from being de-banked.

To be honest, nothing really functions in a way that it should in this country. So unless you are being de-banked or something really serious happens to you, just stay where you are. Because other banks are the same crap. I have other accounts with Novo Banco and Ativo. All of them are horrible and all of them want to be a Champion of the most Nasty Banks in Portugal. :joy:

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Yep this is just the kind of arbitrary decision making I’ve experienced with Millenium BCP too. At least I don’t feel so singled out now …

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My experiences with millenniumBCP and BiG are quase positivas. Whereas @tommigun ’s experience with MillenniumBCP is rather negativa. It really depends on whom one is dealing with in a given bank. My friend of more than 10 yr GV holder confirms the same.

Which branch you are in?

I am at Roma Lisboa.

This is true. I had very few problems with BCP when I had a good account manager. The problem is she left over a year ago and no one replaced her. Literally no one. When I look at my account online, the “personal account manager” is listed as the branch, with a branch email address and a stock photo of a person in a suit. And when I ask when a new manager will be appointed, no one will give me an answer.

I know that my account manager has to handle 700 prestige clients and has KPIs to deliver. Some account holders do not generate much revenue, besides monthly fee, which could lead to different level of responsiveness of the same manager.
I was told that completion rate of annual updating of clients personal data is one of the KPI.

When i was talking to BPI a couple of years ago to open an account, the first response was: we are a commercial bank and would like to know what business you could bring to us. After i told them the potential transactions, i never heard back from them.