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I can tell you that, in Italy, there is not a "standard", in the sense that not all banks are the same, and often one that excels in something is terrible in an
by jaclaz 7y ago
I can tell you that, in Italy, there is not a "standard", in the sense that not all banks are the same, and often one that excels in something is terrible in another aspect.
With home-banking these differences are even more marked, some sites have "reasonable" possibilities offered to the customer, some other have next to none (besides checking your account) some have relatively simple workflows some other are so stupidly complex that you give up.
More or less all of them (the sites) have an inane amount of meaningless dashboard/graphics, and very poor tools (as an example to download some data).
However, when it comes to "serious" matters things are seemingly "random" in the way they change from bank to bank, personal anecdata, a few years ago when an old relative died, to access the accounts it took the heirs (with exactly the SAME documentation):
Bank #1: 3 days <- exceptionally fast
Bank #2: 10 days <- I would say "appropriate" or "logical"
Bank #3: 7 months (or 210 days) <- completely "crazy"
- davidw 7y agoBe curious to hear the banks' names.
- jaclaz 7y ago>Be curious to hear the banks' names. Ow, come on, you know the saying: [Italian] Si dice il peccato e non il peccatore. [/Italian] More seriously, as said that is single point anecdata, it is perfectly possible that today a similar test would give completely different results.
- davidw 7y agoThey're banks; large corporations. It's not like anyone's naming an employee there or something. And I do understand that things vary. One time, for instance, I even had a package arrive quickly through Poste Italiane.
- oAlbe 7y agoIn Italy there's also the problem that most banks don't allow you to receive wire transfers from outside the SEPA area. I had a hard time finding a bank that would allow me to receive transfers from the US. Some of them were actually baffled when I called for information at the idea of someone wanting to receive money from oversea. And let's not even get into keeping an account in another currency. My bank apparently never had to do anything of the sorts, and after digging for information they told me it would cost about 400€ per year just keep the account open.
- riffraff 7y agoFWIW, fineco will let you have foreign currency accounts, for free, and with minimal conversion fees, it's pretty convenient.
- oAlbe 7y agoThat's actually very useful to know, thank you for the information!
- smabie 7y agoDo Italians not invest in US securities at all? Seems kind of strange...
- oAlbe 7y agoI've yet to figure that out. Personally, I'd love to be able to easily invest in a vanguard fund, or even just have the ability to put money every month on index funds, but so far from what I've seen doesn't seem to be possible.
- rocho 7y agoYou can easily buy everything you want from Interactive Brokers. You can deposit EUR and do the transactions in other currencies. The interface is old and complicated, but very powerful. You will have to do the taxes yourself though.
- jaclaz 7y agoWell, you don't strictly need an account in dollars to invest in US securities (but you are more exposed to exchange risks) while it is handy for other kinds of investments in US dollars. As riffraff said, Fineco is one of the very few banks (maybe the only one) that gives the possibility to have foreign currency accounts (linked to a "main" Euro account) at a "reasonable" cost, which is a good thing to have if you deal a lot with the US (both with receiving US dollars and spending in US dollars), but that is not needed for "normal" activities. The "conto in divisa estera" (that quite a few banks have) is basically aimed to business entities (like firms doing import/export) and is usually rather expensive, or - to be more accurate - has very high fixed costs. The alternative in the case of someone receiving US dollars may be some form of accounts with credit/debit cards issuers, but - again generally speaking - they - besides offering less possibilities (and not being "properly" a bank) tend to have low fixed costs but higher commissions/fees on single operations.