Banking in the Netherlands

Boris_Allen

Currently banking in NL with ABN Amro - costing me EUR3 per month for the privilege of letting them use my money. Apparently this is standard and I'm unlikely to be able to find a free bank account to switch to. Anyone got any thoughts/advice?

On a related note, some of the Euros I have parked there really should get invested properly at some point, as the interest rates on the current account and the saver account attached to it are both sub 1%. Any further thoughts?

BonkersBonkers

Are you in Holland now?

In case you have not noticed interest rates for savers are low too in the UK.

Monthly charges for bank accounts are common all over the world - think about this next time you have a whinge about UK banks.

Boris_Allen

Bitcoins it is then...

DCFC79

I could be wrong but free banking like what we have in the UK doesn't exist in m/land Europe.

Archi_Bald

You can get UK-type free euro current accounts. E.g. DKB has been mentioned several times, and a belgian bank whose name escapes, plus there is netbank.de, and I saw another ad for a free one only the other day, again, can't remember the name.

But you are right, they generally charge for all sorts of things, like paying bills or sending money.

JuicyJesus

boris_allen wrote: »

bitcoins it is then...

lol.......

DCFC79 wrote: »

I could be wrong but free banking like what we have in the UK doesn't exist in m/land Europe.

Yeah, free banking is pretty much a British peculiarity.

mse642819

If you live in the Netherlands then you're kinda stuck to using a bank from there. All banks charge for the current accounts ('Betaalrekening') . As far as I know ING is slightly cheaper than ABN Amro and has an amazing mobile app.

I guess you could get a foreign bank account which doesn't charge the fee but that gives you the problem of not having any local branches and not having access to 'Ideal' which most webshops will use for payment (the Dutch debit cards don't have the digits on them like the UK ones to pay online).

Also I've noticed that the interest rates in the Netherlands are lower than in the UK but there's not much you can do about that if you don't want to convert your money to a different currency.

Feel free to message me if you've got any questions about the Netherlands as I'm Dutch and moved to London a few years ago.

Boris_Allen

Yeah this is what I thought. I'll be in Holland for at least 6 more months I should imagine - one could argue that 3 euros a month is not much but there's a principle at stake here also. When I do finally leave I'll close the account but I'll be needing a cheap way to transfer the funds somewhere else!

JuicyJesus

Boris_Allen wrote: »

Yeah this is what I thought. I'll be in Holland for at least 6 more months I should imagine - one could argue that 3 euros a month is not much but there's a principle at stake here also. When I do finally leave I'll close the account but I'll be needing a cheap way to transfer the funds somewhere else!

SEPA payments are quite cheap within the EU, and will get your money there by the next working day at the latest. They'll be the best way to transfer your funds out.

DaveLuk

Just came across this thread looking for something else. I too have an ABN-AMRO account and pay 3 euros a month - but from memory I could be avoiding this if I opted for no paper statements.

System

Archi_Bald wrote: »

You can get UK-type free euro current accounts. E.g. DKB has been mentioned several times

Indeed. If you speak and read German, you can get a free on-line account with DKB.
https://www.dkb.de/int/privatkunden/cash/ww/
It comes with a Visa credit card. This has a token credit limit on it. But you are encouraged to put the card into credit balance, by instant transfers from the cash account. You get 1% interest on the credit balance. You can withdraw cash without fee, and, outside the euro zone, without any loading on the Visa Europe exchange rates. From the (separate) cash account, you get free on-line SEPA credit transfers to the SEPA countries. That includes the UK, of course, but you are at the mercy of the receiving bank for the conversion EUR>GBP.
You can open the DKB cash account on-line, provided you can get (any) bank to stamp a form (in German and English) confirming your passport number and address. Or you can go to (any) Post Office in Germany. Once DKB have received the application, a friendly person from DKB telephones you, obviously talking German, to ask you why you want the account, and how you heard of them.