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Frozen account

PostPosted: Sat Sep 15, 2018 4:48 pm
by Boothy
For the second time in three years we arrived in Spain to find our account with Bankia had been frozen due to our non resident document having run out. We know we have to sign it every two years but it would be nice to get a reminder from them that it is due. Apparently they are under no obligation to let you know. Whatever happened to customer service!?


Even after we had signed it the account remained blocked as my husband hadn’t signed the ‘ data protection document’.

I do have a few family members and friends who also have Spanish bank accounts and are non residents but none of them have had this problem or even been asked to sign these documents. They are with different banks,Sabadell and Santander I think. The Sabadell guy no longer comes over much but does have direct debits out of his account which haven’t been affected.

This year we were also asked to provide proof that we paid tax in England together with our NI numbers by Bankia,this we could do by email and were told we would need to do this every three years. Again no one else we know with property in Spain has been asked for this. Is it just a Bankia thing?

Re: Frozen account

PostPosted: Sat Sep 15, 2018 5:35 pm
by marcliff
Unusual that you have to sign the non-res certificate. Normally the bank does it for you (and charges you) automatically.
The declaration of NI (or tax) numbers and tax payments in your home country is a EU thing. Us residents have had to do it with our UK banks as well.
Not heard the bit about doing it every 3 years, though. We do have to complete a declaration of foreign assets every year (or declare we have no changes to a previous declaration).
Which branch are you with?

Re: Frozen account

PostPosted: Sat Sep 15, 2018 6:33 pm
by Boothy
We are with the Quesada branch.

Re: Frozen account

PostPosted: Sat Sep 15, 2018 8:41 pm
by quizziecat
Interesting, I have never heard of it previously, am a non resident and bank with Sabadel, Hope its not blocked when I come over very soon as have a big payment to make, ie new kitchen

Re: Frozen account

PostPosted: Sun Sep 16, 2018 12:36 am
by Calledali
Just received in U.K. Forms from Santander requesting tax information as a non resident, (we have banked with them for 7 years), and this is the first time they have asked for this information. They have informed us that failure to provide the information could result in our account being blocked. We pay our non residents taxes through our solicitors, but I sometimes wonder whether we are paying too much

Re: Frozen account

PostPosted: Sun Sep 16, 2018 8:05 am
by polop
We have had to do this for a number of years, we were told to it is to prove income, but our bank have always informed us when we had to supply information to stop our account been blocked,,but I understand that new Bank regulations coming in mean that banks will now automatically send your bank details to your tax authority throughout Europe .??

Re: Frozen account

PostPosted: Sun Sep 16, 2018 9:11 am
by JohnES
I would suggest that you change your bank account to another but I cannot recommend a good one. There are no good banks in Spain, just some worse than others. La Caixa Bank at the front of town seem to have good recommendations but I switched from that bank after Barclays pulled out of Spain. I was not impressed with La Caixa Bank during the takeover but it may have improved.

Re: Frozen account

PostPosted: Sun Sep 16, 2018 12:03 pm
by Gasplumbman
I assume this is quite normal as we have had several people this has happened to in different banks so beware I think it's every 2 years,and it's up to you to keep things up to date,that's the Spainish way

Re: Frozen account

PostPosted: Sun Sep 16, 2018 12:28 pm
by Jan
Sabadel sent the NR certificate to our UK address for us to fill in and send off to Madrid.

We have asked that all correspondence goes to our UK address but I can see that may not work for those NR's who spend longer in Spain each time.

They have never frozen our account even when they needed our passports to verify our account once and our cards would not work until we had done that. I remember asking if we had not gone in the branch when we had, would they have frozen the account and stopped our direct debits and they said they would not do that.

Re: Frozen account

PostPosted: Sun Sep 16, 2018 7:21 pm
by manxmunk
I had to do this when I bought back in 2004, it only happened twice, (once every two years), but we have never had to do it since. By the way, I use Bankinter.