Finnish banking

[kullervo]

I'm suddenly a little worried, I left a Merita-Nordbanken account open when I left Finland early 2001, will this have been accruing bank charges over this time?

I tried calling them but they wouldn't let me close the account over the phone and I had no fax access

[dampa]

This old witch at a local Nordea bank made me dislike Nordea for a while I had to stop doing anything with that bank. How would you feel when you are suppose to go to the bank on money issues and the old woman turned into an immigration officer?

I now bank with SP/Aktia & SPankki (for a reason) and had to close my Sampo and all accounts in other banks (charges are getting high for me + bad customer service even when I puhu). Kept the Nordea account as it is the easiest link to the outside world for me

[No.6]

(CLIP)
The sooner this Single European Payments thing is fully implemented the better, I can't believe that in this day and age it can be so complicated!

I've also not been keen on Electron as it's issued to kids and has the associated negative connotations - the onus is on you to prove you have verified funds to cover every single purchase, whereas with Visa Debit/Maestro etc they only issue it to adults with regular income.

When the UK changes to EURO then that will be of some benefit, but for now we need to suffer getting ripped-off by a UK bank every time we want to do a transaction to/from a GBP-currency account, IBAN number or not.

If you feel there is a stigma attached to taking an Electron card why not take a VISA or MC credit card - you are not obliged to get into debt with it. One big advantage is that any purchases (dunno if there is a lower limit) are covered by consumer credit laws so in its way guarantees refund in a dispute with the seller.

Not in the quote but the VISA *charge* card has been around for 20+ years. In this respect I am not talking about a card that debits from a bank account but is billed monthly and is internationally recognised like a credit card. You might get one of these easier than a regular credit card.

BTW, if you believe the UK uses an advanced banking system you cannot have much knowledge of the rest of the developed world. *20* years after arriving in Finland I still have to suffer the embarrassment at work of hearing "amusing" stories of hassle when we receive a cheque from the UK.. and our treasury people insist on sending it back to the sender and asking them to make an electronic payment.

[Donpeblo]

I'm from the UK and I've been here 3 months now. I opened an deposit account for my rental property with Handelsbanken from Norway and then got my regular current account with them on arrival once I had all my paperwork in place. They were very nice and friendly in the branch (which is good) and I've been in a couple of times and they seem to be getting to know me which is a totally different experience from the UK. I haven't experienced this "doing you a favour" service but equally it hasn't been at the American end of the scale either

As a company they claim they want to be some global bank but they do need to upgrade their webiste in Finland - at least put it in English! I'm lucky as I can speak Norwegian so the Swedish pages are not too much of a stretch for me.

I got a Visa Electron with the account and have had no problems with it anywhere. I've even used it in Spain to withdraw money from an ATM. I asked about a fancy card with a chip and was told I'd need to be here two years but now I've had a few months salary paid in I will go and ask them again as I think they must have meant two months!

My bank charges are fine as well - better than in Norway!

Good luck!

[Tiwaz]

Card with microchip? I've been using one for last few years.
Perhaps they thought you were after that SEPA-card thingy?

Or perhaps OP is simply superior bank and offers services of the future already in the past.

[Paul_D]

I think most foreigners prefer Nordea (correct me if I'm wrong here), since their internet banking (called Solo) is also in Swedish and English and is probably one of the most advanced in Finland (if not wider). I'd imagine that Nordea (and Sampo) are more used to having non-Finnish speaking customers, since they're more international.

There is also a website in English and one in Swedish for internet banking at Sampo:
http://www.sampopankki.fi/english/
http://www.sampopankki.fi/svenska/

I have been using both Sampo and Nordea services of internet banking. I have a slight preference for one of them, but both are very good, so I feel it's a bit pointless to say which one looks better to me.

Also, both Nordea and Sampo provides on-line review in English (and Swedish) of their investment funds:
http://funds.nordea.com/eng/services/fu ... rmance.asp
http://sampo.is-asp.com/funds/funds.html

/Paul

[Silly]

Hi,

yep compared to UK... I was shocked!!! You have to pay a fee for almost everything... anyway I chose Nordea because that's the most popular, so less fees for me (if I have to arrange tranfers to my landlord etc.). At Nordea, they told me that the best thing you can do is ALWAYS use the internet banking, since that's just 1 euro fee for any direct debit you set up, compared to 5 Euro (or more? don't remember) if you ask the bank to do it for you.

For the credit card... such a nightmare, in UK they would give it to me when I didn't want it (cut it in two), now that I want it, thay told me you need a permanent residence or something... anyway can't get it during the first months here, no matter which "proofs" of income/other bank accounts you show. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that if you work for a big company like N. they'll give you the card straight waway... it's always like that...


Good luck!

[Desundial]

Yes, I was considering getting a Mastercard or something with the combined pankki-kortti ... Plus, when you use the card abroad it would only work as a credit card, it's not seen as s combined card abroad as that functionality is uniquely Finnish.

At the risk of adding to the confusion on this thread - do you mean only MasterCard w/pankki-kortti from finland doesn't work as a combined card abroad? I have a MC w/direct debit (pankki-kortti) from USA (where banking is really antiquated). It doesn't work as credit card at all but direct debit card and atm card. I've used both of these features all over europe and in a few places in south america without problems.

[jwoods]

When the UK changes to EURO then that will be of some benefit, but for now we need to suffer getting ripped-off by a UK bank every time we want to do a transaction to/from a GBP-currency account, IBAN number or not.

If you feel there is a stigma attached to taking an Electron card why not take a VISA or MC credit card - you are not obliged to get into debt with it. One big advantage is that any purchases (dunno if there is a lower limit) are covered by consumer credit laws so in its way guarantees refund in a dispute with the seller.

Not in the quote but the VISA *charge* card has been around for 20+ years. In this respect I am not talking about a card that debits from a bank account but is billed monthly and is internationally recognised like a credit card. You might get one of these easier than a regular credit card.

BTW, if you believe the UK uses an advanced banking system you cannot have much knowledge of the rest of the developed world. *20* years after arriving in Finland I still have to suffer the embarrassment at work of hearing "amusing" stories of hassle when we receive a cheque from the UK.. and our treasury people insist on sending it back to the sender and asking them to make an electronic payment.

First of all, the UK wont adopt the Euro - certainly not whilst I still have the vote.

When I first moved to Finland, I used a broker to convert my UK funds into Euros, and then move it to my new Nordea current account - and Nordea charged a fee to receive this foreign payment, even though it was in Euros - so it would appear Finnish banks aren't whiter than white on the rip-off fee charging front.

I have considered getting a credit card, but I don't have enough credit history in Finland yet - I didn't even qualify for an ONOFF store card with an 800 € limit despite having a full-time permanent managerial level job.

I guess some businesses in the UK find it more convenient to still use cheques, as you can print them yourself and some companies have procedures whereby only the MD can sign cheques over a certain value, which makes people feel safer, plus it's used to manage cash-flow as it takes days to write/post/cash cheques. Of course nowadays they should be obsolete and I certainly hadn't used one for a while when I was still in the UK. I'm not sure if they ever used personal cheques in Finland, if they didn't I guess the alternative was to queue up in the bank to pay bills/transfer money etc, which a lot of old biddies still do - which is hardly more superior than a cheque.

[blaugrau]

Have you tried applying for a credit card yet?

I've recently broken my resolve to abstain from credit cards and applied for one, despite not having yet lived in Finland for 2 years (it's 1,5 years that I've been here). I asked the bank lady about the 2-year rule and although she confirmed that it exists, it doesn't seem to be set in stone, at least she encouraged me to put in an application anyway and she did seem quite confident that it will work out, even though she said we'll have to see what luottokunta says. So I can tell you in about 2 weeks time if it worked out for me.

[Jukka Aho]

I'm not sure if they ever used personal cheques in Finland

They were still in use back in the 1970s, but as I’ve understood it, their use rapidly declined during that decade as people started getting paid directly on their bank account, “plastic money” and ATMs were introduced, and banks started charging the real expenses of cheques directly from the users.

[EP]

I'm not sure if they ever used personal cheques in Finland,

Like Jukka said, cheques went into oblivion in 1970´s when ATMs and plastic came. Very soon after ATMs came also machines where you can pay your bills.

[Jukka Aho]

Like Jukka said, cheques went into oblivion in 1970´s when ATMs and plastic came. Very soon after ATMs came also machines where you can pay your bills.

Thinking back about it (I was born in the 1970s), I don’t recall my parents – or anyone else I knew back when I was a kid – ever writing checks for any purchase, so it must have gone out of fashion pretty fast. As far as I can recall, purchases were always paid by cash, or by getting billed and then taking the bill to the bank (i.e. via bank transfer, with the bank withdrawing the money directly from the payer’s account and transferring it to the payee’s account), or by using a Finnish bank card (debit card). Oh, and some stores would offer credit accounts on their own... and probably still do, but I’ve never used those kind of services myself so I don’t know too much about them.

Online banking was already getting popular in the 1980s, with the introduction of home computers (not so much PCs but the Commodore 64 and similar systems) and dial-up modems. For example, both SYP (Suomen Yhdyspankki) and KOP (Kansallis-Osake-Pankki) – large Finnish banks at the time – used to offer their own online banking software for the Commodore 64. This did not have anything to do with the Internet at all (browsers did not exist yet, the concept of “web pages” did not exist yet, and ordinary people would not have known anything about “the Internet” anyway, much less be granted access to it, as it was primarily a closed academical/research network at the time) – it was a direct dial-up connection to the bank’s computers.