Proof of funds - money laundering - house purchase France

Help
1

I seem to have hit a standard British stumbling block. I am trying to buy a property in France.

French authorities, through the notary who manages the process of the sale, require your bank to fill a form in which states your bank is happy with the funds within your account.

I’ve spoken to Monzo through support and they’ve advised they won’t fill this form in.

However Monzo is both my full time bank and holds all the funds I have.

I’m a very long standing customer with Monzo, I have multiple savings accounts and am a plus member.

What do I do?

Please help

2

Can’t you send them an up to date bank statement instead?

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3

I suspect this is more anti money laundering (ie funds not from criminal activity) rather than a check that the funds exist.

But in the UK, your solicitor will carry out those checks, your bank doesn’t really have anything to do with this process. So not sure if any other bank would bother (unless talking about the likes of C Hoare & Co with their much more personal service).

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4

Transfer it to a bank that will fill in the form, if one exists. Or to a French account.

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5

Check what they’re actually asking the bank to do. When I did it, they wanted the bank to state why I’d opened each account. If you cast your mind back, that is a question that banks here don’t really ask, so can’t answer. It was fine when I pointed that out.

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6

Most of them do, especially the legacy banks. But people usually skip past that quite quickly because one’s usage will change over time.

7

Thanks everyone, apologies, title updated. Yes the point here is that they’re checking it isn’t money laundering.

Transferring to another bank loses any history I have of funds so I’m not sure how that would work.

Other suggestions or experience of this issue would be amazing.

8

They’ve only started doing that fairly recently. When we were buying our place in 2003, they didn’t.

Oh, only show them details of ONE account. They tagged me as a money launderer when I weighed in with the Woolwich Open Plan account which had a bunch of subaccounts. At that time, it was unusual for a French person to have more than one current and one savings account and to have more than that was suspicious. To have more than one bank just blew their mind!

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