Best place for Euro savings...offshore?

rinnin

I'm an Irish Ex-pat living in the UK for the past 3 years. My life savings were at home in a nice interest earning Savings account with An Post (Post office). Over Christmas my brother (who works in the banking business) was suggesting that with the recession, bailouts and whole Greek situation there was a risk of the Euro going back to the Punt which would immediately devalue my savings.
He suggested I take out my savings and lodge it into a Euro account here in the UK. I've setup the account but havent lodged my draft yet and just wanted to see what the consensus was here about the risk of this happening back home?
(My savings are nowhere near the Deposit Guarantee Limit of €100000)
Many thanks in advance
R

PS. I posted this on an Irish online forum but nobody has responded. Maybe the doom & gloom attitude back home is so bad nobody cares about online discussion anymore?

RetiredInThailand

I would be concerned about what interest rate I was getting, as well as how secure the placement is.

What sort of access do you need? How much is the deposit?

Depending on the answers to those questions you could look at Investec or SBI, or some German/Belgian banks that have been mentioned on here already several times. But it does all depend on the details of what you need.

rinnin

Basically I just need somewhere safe to store the savings in case the Euro goes belly up in Ireland and my savings get devalued back to the Irish Punt. Dont need immediate access as it was in a 30day notice deposit account.
Its in the 5 figure ballpark.
Have applied to Barclays last Saturday. Opened a current account with them (took about an hour, was almost waiting for them to ask for a DNA sample) in order to setup a Euro only account and awaiting confirmation in the post. HSBC were going to charge me £5 a month for a Euro account, Barclays dont charge a monthly fee. Hoping I get option of a savings account.

But main question is how likely is it that the Euro would go belly up as I'd prefer to have my savings back home where it was earning a nice 3.5% interest?

atush

HSBC and Barclays have euro accts (if that is what you want to save in).

But AIB has euro accts and pays better interest. But the deposit guarantee is only 50K so I would invest less than that.

RetiredInThailand

"5-figure ballpark" isn't precise enough really, and you aren't precise about access There are accounts that have minimum balances of 10,000 and 25,000 and 50,000 so I don't know which you would qualify for. Access could be 1 month or 5 years. I know which suits me (80% of my cash is tied up for 3 years or more) but which suits you?

I doubt that Barclays will give you much interest, whereas the other banks I mentioned will pay reasonable interest and they have no regular charges (I am allergic to bank charges).

Watch out for offshore banks: the much-vaunted deposit protection in the IOM and CI is probably worth very little as it is retro-funded and has a very low total cap, and the local governments have no real funds to bail them out, even if they wanted to. If just one medium-sized bank ran into trouble that would probably wipe out the total cover. If you want to put all your life savings with offshore banks, I would favour ones where the parent guarantees the subsidiary. Few do, these days. I would also look for parent banks that basically sound and are located in fairly big countries with fairly big economies (remember Iceland?).

atush

Well I had money in KSF, and got back not only 100% but i got back Interest at 5% too on top.

And it is now being funded quarterly. So I am willing to trust them with 10K or so, but I wouldn't put large sums there.

RetiredInThailand

atush wrote: »

Well I had money in KSF, and got back not only 100% but i got back Interest at 5% too on top.

You were lucky and it was with no thanks at all to Iceland. Thank the IMF and the UK if you like, as without them I suspect you would still be waiting for your refund.

Iceland was a disaster waiting to happen; a country with a total population similar to that of just one medium-sized UK town, and with a banking sector that was 10 times larger than the GDP of the entire country. Total insanity.
The CI and IOM are dodgy for a similar reason; I think their banking sectors are far too large when compared to their GDPs.

atush

Sorry? you must be joking?

the UK gov caused the IOM bank (which was solvent) to fail by confiscating all their funds on deposit in the UK as they Decided unilaterally they were the funds of the Icelandic parent- but they weren't. They were the funds of the IOM sub.

100% of my compensation came form the IOM govt, not a penny from the IMF.

rinnin

atush wrote: »

HSBC and Barclays have euro accts (if that is what you want to save in).

But AIB has euro accts and pays better interest. But the deposit guarantee is only 50K so I would invest less than that.

Thanks for that. I didnt realise AIB had a UK business. Pity their opening hours aren't convenient for my job. Would probably have to take a day off to visit them to open a Euro account with them.
Just hope the fact that even though they're an Irish bank in the UK wouldn't carry the same risk with my Euro holdings as in a regular Irish bank back home.


Still waiting for someone to offer an opinion on my original question though:
"How likely is it that the Euro would go belly up as I'd prefer to have my savings back home where it was earning a nice 3.5% interest?"

atush

Pretty sure if you have all the ID required you can do it by post. They have offered me that option?

We can't answer your question. Those who know aren't talking and if they know they are shorting etc to make their own cash i suspect.

The offshore bit of AIB is based in IOM/Jersey but they have a UK presence too i suspect. I also suspect the accts aren't the same so see hwich one fits best with you.