Polar Bear

Hi Guys
My friend has bought a property in Italy and would like to manage letting fees from there.
Can anybody tell us if it is possible to arrange an Italian bank account here in the UK?

jdr

Try asking in your local bank, I set one up in Spain from UK through a contact between Lloyds and a Spanish bank, so should be able to do similar in Italy.
Although things may of tightened up due to the money laundering restrictions now.

DORI DOE

You could try contacting a relocation company and see if they could open up an account on someone's behalf.

LouisaB

Why doesn't your friend open a normal bank account in Italy (I assume he/she is there sometimes) and then operate it online? BancoPosta conto corrente offers this option. L

.Ariel.

Highly recommend Fineco. It's an Italian online bank so can be opended from anywhere I guess. Otherwise, as said before, go into your UK bank and get suggestions from them. These days banks are used to helping people set up abroad. HSBC has some kind of internatioanl account advertised on their home page.

TestaRossa

I'm with HSBC in the UK and unless things have changed they don't yet have a prescence in Italy. There was talk in the papers here recently that they are looking to buy one of the Italian banks, can't remember which one, but it was a reasonable sized one.

Margaret M

Same here, no HSBC presence in Italy yet.

duffer

What about Barclays bank...
www.barclays.it
They even have a section especially for buying property in Italy.