'Opening a bank account in Uruguay.' Expat

Opening a bank account in Uruguay.

Are we restricted as to how much we can bring into the country by either the Uruguayan govt or the US govt?

I keep hearing that there are going to be restrictions on having money bank wired to another country from the US. Who knows what to believe but if the US economy tanks due to inflation, the US dollar won't be able to buy the peso's to live on.

So looking ahead, what would one do or who should one see to stay ahead of this? I would like to know so that I can investigate when I come in November. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Terry

At the Banco de la Republica, you can open an account with two pieces of ID and maybe something showing your address (in Uruguay). The private banks may annoy you with requests for reference letters and/or not want business from American clients.

The Banco de la Republica claims not to accept checks from the USA for deposit. The private banks seem happy to take them. You'll pay about a US$50 service charge (probably less than a wire) and wait 4 weeks or so for the check to clear. Hint: take your US check to the customer service department not a cashier.

You have no control over whether the US changes banking laws about writing funds to another country, so why fret about it until it is clearly happening?

It is true that she does need not fret about a yet to be effected policy but knowing that in advance might help. I thought the US dollar was a currency in use in Uruguay. Why would the bank reject checks from the USA?

There's no FDIC down here, and nobody to complain to. Your best bet is an European or American Bank, you have been warned!

Now, we can argue whether the insurance will actually cover any losses... but we can make the same argument with the FDIC.

Don't forget to use a good bit of common sense.

• Banking in Uruguay

Most international banks in Uruguay shield all of their clients information with Uruguay’s bank secrecy laws. These laws allow the banks to deny inquiries for any information about their clients with the exclusion of a criminal warrant, given by the courts where there is proof of criminal behaviour, (eg. money laundering or fraud). Your information will not be released to a taxation agency like the IRS or CRA. When an international bank operates in a country where secrecy laws shield clients AND they elect to apply those laws to ALL clients, without exception, they sign an agreement with the IRS pledging to refuse to open accounts for anyone presenting a US passport or where their birth, citizenship or residency is listed on a different identity document, (eg. the back of the Cedula).

• Opening a bank account

The easiest ROU bank in which to open an account is BROU. The private banks are much fussier about opening accounts and can take several days to consider whether or not they want your money. Unlike the north, the ROU central bank learned from its banking collapse of 2001/2 and imposed all sorts of strict regulations... one of which being a ban on the banks lending on the "security" of instant access deposits. Thus ROU banks find instant access deposits much less attractive than their northern cousins who still commit the sin of borrowing short and lending long because they know their governments will bail them out when the next bubble hits.

Once you have a bank account, BROU shows its bureaucratic credentials and can make it difficult transfering sums larger than 10k U$S into the ROU. Last year I sold a farm in the UK and transfered a very large sum to Banco Santander and 15k U$S to BROU. Santander accepted the dosh without fuss and the manager phoned me to ask if I could drop by for a drink and show him some paperwork about it in the next couple of weeks. On the other hand BROU returned the 15k to England without bothering to contact me at all. Needless to say, I closed my BROU account.

I recently talked to an expat here who was told he had to lodge some insane figure like US$50, 000 or more just to open an account! Banks don't seek your money down here - they won't offer you high interest rates on large deposits and they will continue to charge you "maintenance fees", they're not exactly very business savy. Basically, unlike up north, they still expect the customer to pay the bank for looking after their money. Whereas we have come to expect the bank to pay us for letting them hold on to our money (because of the benefits they get from it as Patrick already highlighted).

Most banks will charge you for having money in instant access accounts. If you have a lot in such an account, they may pay you a tiny bit of interest... usually just about enough to cover their fees. They are just looking after your money rather than investing it.

On the other hand, if you want to invest your money in a fixed term deposit (usually 2 months or more) the banks will pay you interest.

If you want more interest, you can visit a broker in MVD and invest tax free in local dollar, UI pesos or straight peso bonds... some of which are resalable on the secondary markets. Currently, the government is offering 12% on one year peso fixed deposits, about 4% plus inflation on UI peso bonds (resellable on the markets) and about 6% on dollar bonds (also resellable.)

I have an question.

It seems from all the remarks that there is no way to open an bank account without residence and utility bills. How do you get to pay bills if you don't have bank account?

Hope to get to meet some of you on my trip.

Dana

IME the banks will accept utility bills from your country of origin when you first arrive. I presented Santander with an Anglian Water bill and a statement from my local gas supplier in the UK (Calor Gas) which caused the manager to chuckle.

"How do you get to pay bills if you don't have bank account?"

The majority of Uruguayos don't have bank accounts as memories of the 2001/02 crash are still fresh in their memories. Instead, we have various chains of payment offices (Anitab, Redpago and others) where you can take your bills and pay them in cash.

Thanks for getting back to me.

I think this explains some of my questions.

Living is USA leaves you somewhat on one track and used to convenience.

But I love challenge and I think that is what I am up for.

How long did it take you from the time of decision to when you actually took up your residence?

Dana

As you can imagine I don't have gas and electric receipts since I am a renter in the Kingdom. I do have rent receipts for the last several months. Do you think they would be accepted? I had hoped to leave

Thailand out of the picture and just present myself as American because it seems like that would be easier for the police check.

Bob

You'll probably find the banks in MVD and the coast a bit more up to date than our mid 20th century ones in the campo. They have such modern wonders as ATM machines and clever plastic cards... things us country bumpkins have yet to meet :-)

I took the decision to move here after a visit in Nov/Dec 2005. I arrived here in September 2006, bought an old car, did a grand national tour, rented a series of houses in Colonia Valdense while looking for an ideal chacra c/w an up-together house, failed to find one and finally bought my ideal chacra with a ruin on 1st May 2007. I'm hoping to have the house finished by March 2010 but I'm not holding my breath.

Its MUCH quicker and easier to buy yourself a satisfactory home to begin with but small farms with good houses are as rare as hens with teeth in rural Colonia.

@ tgibob...

The banks have to go through the paperwork to satisfy the 1st world's anti-laundering regs. I don't know whether they'd accept rent receipts but I'd have thought that they would. Its all nonsense of course because any professional money launderer would surely arrive with an impressive set of falsified utility bills (not hard to do with the internet, a PC and a printer) and its most unlikely that a bank would bother to check their validity if they looked good. As far as I know, the banks don't share such info with imigration. The only information which the bank passes to imigration is to confirm the arrival of the monthly income as declared on your residency application.

I suspect that you might get fewer hassles wrt Uncle Sam's increasing levels of currency controls if you presented yourself as a Paddy. After all, everybody loves us :-)

Tom T

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