Help spanish bank transfer problems

placemat

My wife and I are uk citizens we have a current a/c in england plus a spanish bank account (Sabadell) in Spain
I became seriously ill with cancer in 2018 and we decided to make big changes to our lives and re-evaluate of our financial position. We wanted to close the spanish account and transfer our funds back to the uk.,as we were unlikely to go to spain in future.

We have an online account with Sabadell bank and applied for a bank transfer but were unsuccessful because part of my digital signature was my mobile number and I no longer had this phone because it was stolen whist I was in hospital. Bank Sabadell were informed and a request was made to change to my wifes mobile number.

This request started by email early April and there have been many emails backward and forward since then asking for identification. We provided, as asked our Nat. ID, our passport numbers,our uk landline tel. no, my wifes mobile no, uk address etc. Then we were asked to send copies of our passports, which we did.To cut a long story short, I have copied my latest reply below

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In order to change the mobile number, we need first to include your national insurance number in our files. Those are new instructions from head office since some months.
Please send me that and we will modify the telephone. After we modify, we will send you new documents that you need to sign because of the new data law protection.

Thank you for understanding.

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I am very uncomfortable about sending any more of our personal information and can't understand why it is neccessary to provide
our uk nat. ins. numbers just to change a mobile telephone number which would enable an online transfer of our own money back to the uk. A simple bank transfer that should only take a few days has become very complicated and so far has taken months.
Any advise or suggestions would be appreciated

eDicky

It is normal for European banks to require an account holder's tax number, or NINo for a UK citizen, so it's not really a surprising request if they don't already have it.

Are you unable to do anything with your account, including a local transfer to another Spanish account, such as that of a transfer service?

xylophone

I am very uncomfortable about sending any more of our personal information and can't understand why it is neccessary to provide
our uk nat. ins. numbers

If you were opening an ISA in this country you would have to supply your NINO and I notice that it is being requested now for other accounts as well.

It doesn't seem an unreasonable request from Sabadell.

colsten

As long as you are certain that you are giving all this information to Sabadell, there's no problem in giving them what they require.

Be grateful that they have such stringent security requirements - imagine they didn't and some fraudster posing as you convinced them to sending him your money!

Have you investigated using a currency transfer specialist, such as Transferwise, or a multi currency account like Starling, to get your money to the UK? They are both likely to be cheaper than Sabadell. Starling would have the advantage of FSCS protection. Sabadell would just see a Euro to Euro transaction, which you should be able to do yourself online (assuming you have online access to your Sabadell account).