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What is your experience with your bank?

Last activity 22 January 2020 by veeraj.john

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boxdeluxe

Dear expats,

I will be opening a bank account soon.

Use:
only to pay daily bills and monthly rent, most of my income will be transferred back to my Bank in Europe.

I would like to know what bank would you advise for such use?

Also please give me your feedback regarding the bank you had and have.

Thanks :)

XTang

Well it really depends on what you want.

If you already have an HSBC / Citi or Standard chartered account in Europe and want instant transfers through their Global link services; then choose these ones.  Open a Euro account as well with them, convert and deposit BHD into Euro account and transfer instantly.

Service wise it depends.   I may not be a representative customer as I have HSBC Premier, CitiGold and SCB priority banking accounts.  So this means that I have my own relationship manager in each bank and only interact with the bank through him / her or through visiting them in their dedicated lounges.  So I get much higher service than a normal customer.  However, among all of them, even at this level, I would rate HSBC higher than the other two.

boxdeluxe

Interesting.
I will not use the bank as we do in Europe for loans etc. Only for a support to receive the salary and paying the rent. The main will be sent in Europe so the idea is to pay an account (with card) as low as possible and transfer the rest.

XTang

Then get any account with literally any bank; all of them support chequebooks, cards, credit cards, online banking etc.  Look into BBK or Ithmaar.  And use one of the exchanges e.g. UAE exchange for transfer of BHD to Euro at the best possible rates - bank rates will not be as good.

boxdeluxe

Thank you XTang :)
Regarding the transfer, I was thinking to use TransferWise, as the cost is very low.
What do you think?

XTang

Compare with the exchanges as well.

veeraj.john

I Will not suggest BBK any time. They are very slow in their processes. Loans are not at all a easy process. They basically don't care about customers.

Citibank is good for me. But they come with higher Interest rates. Service wise, they are very good.

Not used any services from other banks.

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