Your bank wrote to say your account will close because you live in France. The letter gives you two months, maybe less, and suddenly your salary, your direct debits, your rent and your French tax payments all hang in the air. Since Brexit, hundreds of thousands of Britons settled on the continent have received exactly this letter, and the panic it causes is understandable: in France, daily life without a local bank account quickly becomes an obstacle course. This guide explains, step by step and entirely from official sources, what changed when the United Kingdom left the European Union, how a British resident opens a French current account in practice, and what to do when a French bank says no. French law gives you a genuine safety net, called the droit au compte (the statutory right to an account), under which the Banque de France (the French central bank) can designate a bank that must take you on. Every decisive statement below is anchored to the statute or the court decision it comes from, with the exact quotation where it matters, so that you can act on paperwork rather than rumour.

A note on language before we start. French legal terms appear in italics with a plain-English explanation at first use: compte de dépôt means an ordinary deposit or current account; relevé d’identité bancaire, universally shortened to RIB, is the slip showing your French account number in IBAN format; justificatif de domicile is documentary proof of your home address; attestation de refus is the written refusal certificate a bank must hand you; and an OQTF does not appear here at all, because this article is about banking, not immigration status. Your residence paperwork still matters to the bank, as we shall see, and our companion guide on which long-stay visa and which residence card to apply for, and how to challenge a refusal covers that side in detail.

I. Your UK bank closes your account: what Brexit changed and how to open a French account

A. Why UK banks shut the accounts of Britons living in France, and the first moves that protect you

Before Brexit, a British bank could serve customers across the European Economic Area on the strength of its UK licence alone, through a mechanism called passporting. When the transition period ended, that passport disappeared for firms without an establishment licensed inside the Union. A bank headquartered in London that wanted to keep offering current accounts to residents of France would therefore have needed a separately authorised EU entity or a French branch approval, with the compliance cost that implies. Many high-street providers decided the numbers did not add up for a scattered population of expatriate customers, and from late 2020 onwards they wrote to account holders with a registered address in the EU or EEA to announce closures. The British government itself acknowledges the situation in its official Living in France guidance on GOV.UK, which tells British residents that UK-based banks may close their accounts and that they should check the position with their provider and consider local alternatives.

The important point is that the closure letter is a commercial decision, not a punishment, and not a judgement on you. It does not affect your credit file, it does not mean you have done anything wrong, and it does not prevent you from opening an account elsewhere. What it does is start a clock, so treat the letter as the first exhibit in a small file you will now build. Keep the letter itself, keep the envelope or the email headers showing the date, and note the exact closure date and the arrangements the bank proposes for the remaining balance. Download at least twelve months of statements before access ends, because those statements will serve twice over: first as evidence of your direct debits and standing orders so you can rebuild them in France without missing a payment, and second as supporting paperwork in your new French application, where proof of regular income and of old banking history always helps even though it is not on any statutory list.

Next, map every payment connected to the closing account before it shuts. List incoming payments such as salary, pension, rental income or transfers from a spouse, and outgoing ones such as French energy bills paid by prélèvement SEPA (SEPA direct debit), subscriptions, insurance, and the monthly or annual debits for French taxes. Rebuilding this map takes an evening and saves months of missed-payment fees, because a French energy supplier or insurer that cannot debit your account will first charge, then suspend, then terminate. If your UK bank offers to keep you on under different terms, for example by switching you to an international or non-resident product, compare the fees and the transfer costs honestly against a French account before accepting; nothing in French law obliges you to bank in France, but as a French resident you will find that many everyday counterparties, from landlords to the tax administration, work far more smoothly with a French RIB.

One reassuring difference between the two systems is worth stating early. The United Kingdom runs on positive credit reference files: lenders share data about every account you hold and every payment you make, and a thin file hurts. France has no equivalent general file. The Banque de France keeps registers of payment incidents, the best known being the file of cheques and the file of personal credit repayment incidents, which record difficulties, not good behaviour. A bank that takes you on therefore judges your file on its own criteria, starting with your identity papers and your proof of address, rather than on a score computed elsewhere. Your British banking past neither follows you automatically nor counts against you; what counts is the file you put on the counter today.

Finally, resist two expensive mistakes. The first is leaving the closure to the last week and discovering that your new French card has not arrived when the old account shuts: direct debits presented in the gap bounce, and each bounce costs money and goodwill. The second is asking a friend or relative to lend you their account as a stopgap, which muddles the paper trail of your income and can trigger exactly the anti-money-laundering questions described below. Open your own account, in your own name, as early as possible, and keep every letter each institution sends you. In banking disputes, as in tax disputes, the party with the dated paperwork usually wins.

B. Opening a French current account as a British resident: papers, identity checks and straight answers

Any person domiciliée en France, which means genuinely and stably living in France rather than merely visiting, can claim the opening of a deposit account with the bank of their choice, provided they hold no such account in France yet. That is the opening proposition of Article L312-1 of the Code monétaire et financier (the Monetary and Financial Code), which states word for word: “A droit à l’ouverture d’un compte de dépôt dans l’établissement de crédit de son choix, sous réserve d’être dépourvu d’un tel compte en France”, and continues, “Toute personne physique ou morale domiciliée en France”. As a British citizen you are a third-country national since Brexit, but the statute does not reserve the right to French or EU nationals: domicile in France is the test, so a Briton living in France with a Withdrawal Agreement card, a multi-year residence card or any valid titre de séjour (residence permit) satisfies it, provided no French deposit account already stands in their name. Holding only a joint account does not block you either, because the same article adds that holding a collective account does not prevent the opening of an individual one.

In practice the bank will ask for three things: proof of identity, proof of domicile, and evidence of your right to reside. A valid British passport proves identity. The justificatif de domicile is typically a recent electricity, gas or landline bill, a rent receipt from a professional landlord, a home insurance certificate, or the latest French property or income tax notice; a mobile phone bill alone is often refused, and a hotel booking or a friend’s address without supporting documents will not do. For residence rights, present your Withdrawal Agreement residence card or your current residence permit and, if it has recently expired while a renewal is pending, the récépissé (the official renewal receipt) together with the expired card. Banks are private businesses and some counter staff apply checklists written for French nationals, so if you are asked for a document that does not exist for Britons, such as an EU identity card, calmly offer the passport plus residence card combination and ask for the request in writing. Written requests are easier to answer, and to appeal, than oral ones.

Expect detailed questions about what you earn, where the money comes from, and what the account will be used for, and answer them fully and truthfully. These questions are not curiosity and not hostility: they are the statutory customer-knowledge duty. Article L561-5 of the Monetary and Financial Code requires banks, before entering into a business relationship, to “Identifient leur client et, le cas échéant, le bénéficiaire effectif au sens de l’article L. 561-2-2” and to verify those details “sur présentation de tout document écrit à caractère probant”, that is, against any written document of probative value. Article L561-5-1 adds that before the relationship starts the bank shall collect “les informations relatives à l’objet et à la nature de cette relation et tout autre élément d’information pertinent”, information about the purpose and nature of the relationship and any other relevant detail, and keep it updated for as long as the relationship lasts. A British pension paid from abroad, freelance income from UK clients, or a large transfer to fund a house purchase are all perfectly lawful, but they are exactly the items the bank must document, so bring pension statements, client contracts or the sale particulars of your UK property without being asked twice.

Understand the consequence of an incomplete or evasive file, because it is mechanical. Article L561-8 provides that where the bank cannot satisfy the identification and knowledge duties, “elle n’exécute aucune opération, quelles qu’en soient les modalités, n’établit ni ne poursuit aucune relation d’affaires”, it carries out no transaction and neither establishes nor continues any business relationship. In plain terms, a bank that cannot verify who you are and where your funds come from is not merely entitled to refuse you: it is forbidden to take you on. The refusal you receive in that situation is therefore not discrimination against Britons; it is the compliance department applying a statute that carries criminal penalties. The practical lesson is to over-document rather than under-document, to declare the true purpose of every significant incoming transfer, and never to lend your account to third-party flows you cannot explain, however innocent the request from a friend may sound.

When the bank accepts you, the relationship is governed by a written account agreement, the convention de compte. Article L312-1-1 obliges banks to make available to customers and the public, on paper or another durable medium, “les conditions générales et tarifaires applicables aux opérations relatives à la gestion d’un compte de dépôt, selon des modalités fixées par un arrêté du ministre chargé de l’économie”, the general and pricing terms for deposit-account operations. Article R312-1 reinforces the transparency duty by requiring banks to publish the standard banking conditions they apply. Read the tariff leaflet before signing, compare the monthly account fee, the card fee, the cost of transfers to the United Kingdom, and the overdraft rate, and keep a copy of everything you sign. If money is tight, know that the statute also protects people in financial fragility: Article L312-1-3 caps the fees banks may charge for handling account irregularities and provides a specific low-cost offer for fragile customers, so ask for it expressly if your situation qualifies rather than silently paying capped fees you should not be paying.

II. The droit au compte safety net: making a bank take you on, and defending the account afterwards

A. The Banque de France designation procedure, step by step, including Paris and the Île-de-France

If the bank of your choice refuses to open an account, French law does not leave you to try doors one by one until somebody relents. It gives you a formal fallback called the droit au compte procedure, and it works. The procedure is free, it runs on short statutory deadlines measured in working days, and at the end of it a designated bank must open the account. The official practical guides published by Service-Public.fr on the right to an account and by the Banque de France on the designation process describe the same steps set out below; what follows adds the statutory detail and the court decisions that give those steps their teeth.

Step one is to obtain the refusal certificate, the attestation de refus d’ouverture de compte. The statute is explicit: the bank that refuses must supply you systematically, free of charge and without delay, on paper, and on another durable medium if you expressly request it, with a certificate recording the refusal, and must tell you that you can ask the Banque de France to designate a bank for you. It must also offer, for a private individual, to forward the designation request to the Banque de France in your name and for your account, transmitting the information needed to open it. Accept that forwarding offer when it is made, because it puts the file into the official channel immediately, but also take your own copy of the certificate: it is the key that opens the rest of the procedure, and without it the Banque de France has nothing to act on. If the bank refuses to hand over the certificate, note the date, the branch, the name of the person seen, and send a written request by recorded delivery the same day; a refusal of the certificate is itself a breach you can later evidence.

Step two is the referral to the Banque de France, which you or someone acting for you can make. The statute allows the bank to transmit the file, and it also allows the department, the family benefits fund, the communal or intercommunal social action centre, a non-profit association supporting people in difficulty or defending family interests, or an approved consumer association to transmit it in your name and for your account at your request. In Paris and the Île-de-France this matters more than elsewhere, because newcomers often have thin address files and many doors to knock on: the social services of the Paris town hall, the departmental services of the inner and outer suburbs, and the recognised consumer and family associations can all carry the file, and their involvement costs nothing. The designation request must include the documents defined by ministerial order, essentially identity, domicile and the refusal certificate, so assemble them before you go and keep a complete copy of everything transmitted.

Step three is the designation itself, and the deadlines are the heart of the system. The Banque de France designates a bank located near your home or near another place of your choice, taking into account the market shares of the institutions concerned, within one working day of receiving the required documents. The designated bank must then offer you the basic banking services defined by decree and open the deposit account within three working days of receiving all the documents it needs. The account is governed by a written agreement on paper or another durable medium with your consent. For a British family settling in Paris, the choice between an institution near your flat or near your workplace is a useful option: you can ask for a branch near your flat or near your workplace, and the market-share criterion means the designation falls in practice on one of the large networks with a dense branch presence in the capital and the suburbs, which is precisely what you want when you still need counter service in English-friendly surroundings.

Step four is knowing what the designated account contains, because it is deliberately a plain but complete product. Article D312-5 lists the basic services word for word: “1° L’ouverture, la tenue et la clôture du compte ; 2° Un changement d’adresse par an ; 3° La délivrance à la demande de relevés d’identité bancaire ; 4° La domiciliation de virements bancaires ; 5° La fourniture mensuelle d’un relevé des opérations effectuées sur le compte ; 6° L’encaissement de chèques et de virements bancaires ; 7° Les paiements par prélèvements SEPA, titre interbancaire de paiement SEPA ou par virement bancaire SEPA, ce dernier pouvant être réalisé aux guichets ou à distance ; 8° Des moyens de consultation à distance du solde du compte ; 9° Les dépôts et les retraits d’espèces au guichet ou aux distributeurs automatiques de l’organisme teneur de compte ; 10° Une carte de paiement permettant notamment le paiement d’opérations sur internet et le retrait d’espèces dans l’Union européenne.” Opening, keeping and closing the account, one change of address a year, RIBs on request, direct debits, a monthly statement, cashing cheques and transfers, SEPA payments, remote balance access, counter and cash-machine deposits and withdrawals, and a payment card that works online and for cash across the Union: everything a household needs to receive a salary or pension and pay French bills is there, and the pricing of these services is set by decree, not by the bank’s commercial imagination.

Two practical warnings complete the picture. First, the right applies if you hold no deposit account in France, so if you already hold one, even a little-used one, the Banque de France will not designate another; close or regularise the old position first and say so expressly in the file. Second, the procedure assumes you satisfy the identification duties described in Part I: the designated bank still verifies your identity and the purpose of the relationship, and a designation does not dispense you from producing genuine papers. The safety net catches people whom banks refuse for commercial reasons, not files built on documents that cannot be verified.

B. Keeping the account: closure rules, the two-month notice, mediation, vigilance and IBAN discrimination

An account obtained through the designation procedure cannot be closed on a whim. The statute lists exactly six cases in which the bank may unilaterally terminate the agreement, and only those six: first, the customer has deliberately used the account for transactions the institution has reason to suspect of pursuing unlawful aims; second, the customer supplied inaccurate information; third, the customer no longer meets the domicile or residence conditions; fourth, the customer has since opened a second deposit account in France giving access to basic banking services; fifth, the customer has shown repeated rudeness towards the bank’s staff; sixth, the bank finds itself in one of the anti-money-laundering situations of Article L561-8. Termination takes the form of a free paper letter, it must be reasoned unless reasoning would harm national security or public order, a copy goes to the Banque de France for information, and a minimum notice period of two months applies except in the first two cases, deliberate misuse for suspected unlawful purposes and inaccurate information. The letter must also tell you about the customer-relations department and the mediation scheme for any dispute about the termination. Read any closure letter against this checklist line by line: wrong case, missing reasons, missing notice, missing mediation notice, and the termination is vulnerable.

The leading court decision on these closures deserves close attention, because it defines the key phrase of deliberate use in the bank’s favour and therefore tells you exactly what never to do. In Cassation, Commercial Chamber, 30 June 2021, appeal no. 19-14.313, a bank designated under the right-to-account scheme had closed the account without notice, invoking a so-called atypical operation linked to an Iranian business partner and international sanctions circuitry. The Court of Cassation quashed the appeal court’s decision and held: “Il résulte de ce texte que l’établissement de crédit peut résilier unilatéralement la convention de compte assorti des services bancaires de base, ouvert en application du droit au compte, lorsque le client a délibérément utilisé son compte pour des opérations que l’organisme a des raisons de soupçonner comme poursuivant des fins illégales, auquel cas il est dispensé de lui accorder un préavis. Constitue une utilisation délibérée du compte, au sens de ce texte, le fait, pour son titulaire, d’en communiquer les coordonnées à un cocontractant afin qu’il effectue un paiement par virement sur ce compte.” In other words, the bank may close without notice where the customer deliberately used the account for transactions it has reason to suspect of unlawful aims, and merely passing your RIB to a business partner so they can pay you by transfer counts as deliberate use of the account within that definition. The lesson for ordinary British residents is straightforward and reassuring: normal household use, salary, pension, household bills and a documented house purchase never meet this test, but opaque international circuits that you cannot explain, or that you refuse to explain, can. Transparency is your shield; use it from the first transfer.

The mirror image of that decision protects you against overbearing banks. French law forbids the banker from meddling in your affairs, and the courts police the boundary. In Cassation, Commercial Chamber, 4 February 2026, appeal no. 24-19.196, a retired customer of modest means who had never wired money abroad instructed a 30,000 euro transfer to Spain for what turned out to be an investment scam, and sued the bank for breach of its vigilance duty. The Court of Cassation quashed the appeal decision that had condemned the bank and restated the rule: “Le banquier, tenu à une obligation de ne pas s’immiscer dans les affaires de son client, ne doit l’alerter qu’en présence d’anomalies apparentes aisément décelables par un professionnel normalement diligent.” The banker, bound not to interfere in the customer’s affairs, must alert the customer only where there are apparent anomalies easily detectable by a reasonably diligent professional. Unusual and disproportionate is not enough on its own; the anomaly must be apparent. For you, the practical reading runs both ways: a bank that freezes a perfectly documented transfer for your French house purchase without an apparent anomaly is overstepping, and you can complain, while a bank that questions a genuinely odd instruction is doing its job, and you should answer rather than take offence. Before any exceptional transfer, call your adviser, explain the operation, and send the supporting documents in advance; customers who announce their big moves are almost never blocked.

When things do go wrong, the remedies follow a clear ladder. Start inside the bank with a written complaint to the customer-relations department, sent by recorded delivery or through the bank’s durable-medium channel, setting out the facts, the dates, and the statutory provision you rely on. If the answer is unsatisfactory or none arrives within the bank’s published time limit, go to the independent banking mediator, the médiateur bancaire, whose details appear in your account agreement and on every termination letter. Article L316-1 states the principle in plain terms: “Tout consommateur a droit de recourir gratuitement à un médiateur”, every consumer is entitled to free recourse to a mediator. Mediation is free, it suspends nothing but it often resolves everything, and the mediator’s opinion, while not a judgement, carries real weight with the bank’s legal department. Beyond mediation, the Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority, the Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de résolution, supervises compliance with the banking accessibility charter, since the statute provides that monitoring of the charter is carried out by that Authority, and a report to it concentrates minds. Finally, the civil courts can award damages for wrongful closure or wrongful refusal to execute: Article 1231-1 of the Code civil (the Civil Code) provides that “Le débiteur est condamné, s’il y a lieu, au paiement de dommages et intérêts soit à raison de l’inexécution de l’obligation, soit à raison du retard dans l’exécution, s’il ne justifie pas que l’exécution a été empêchée par la force majeure”, the debtor is ordered to pay damages for non-performance or delay unless performance was prevented by force majeure. Keep the refusal certificate, the closure letter, the statements showing the bounced payments and the fees they caused: damages are computed from documents, not from indignation.

One last protection is European and increasingly useful: the ban on IBAN discrimination. Under Article 9 of Regulation (EU) No 260/2012 on SEPA Payment requirements, no payer or payee may specify the Member State in which the payment account must be located, provided the account is reachable. The European Commission’s page on IBAN discrimination explains the complaint routes where the rule is ignored. Concretely, a French employer, a landlord, a telecom operator or a tax office that refuses your non-French euro IBAN, or an institution that insists on a French RIB where a reachable euro account exists, is breaking European payments law as it applies in France. The rule cuts both ways and therefore also protects the French IBAN you will soon hold when you deal with providers elsewhere in Europe. If you meet a refusal, cite the regulation in writing, keep the reply, and escalate to the Commission’s national contact channels or the competent authority rather than arguing at the counter.

Conclusion

A closing UK account is an administrative shock, not a legal dead end. Rebuild your payment map before the old account shuts, present a complete and truthful file to the French bank of your choice, and if that bank refuses, demand the written refusal certificate and let the Banque de France designate an institution that must take you within days, with the full set of basic services the decree guarantees. Once the account runs, use it transparently, announce exceptional transfers in advance, and measure every closure letter against the six statutory cases, the two-month notice and the mediation notice. The two court decisions above draw the boundaries clearly: deliberate opaque use can cost you the account without notice, while ordinary documented life, even unusual in amount, cannot fairly trigger either closure or a freeze, and an independent mediator plus the civil courts stand behind the customer when a bank oversteps. Keep every letter, meet every deadline, and the French banking system, for all its paperwork, will do what the statute commands: give every person genuinely living in France a working account.