Offshore accounts: how a Spanish savings bank offers an escape route

The escape account you can sign up for without leaving Spain

Opening an account with a foreign bank without setting foot in the country is now possible: a Spanish savings bank acts as an intermediary and handles the paperwork for some thirty institutions spread across half of Europe and the United States. The customer only has to sign. The list ranges from Germany's Landesbank Baden-Württemberg to Bank of America, taking in Société Générale, Regazo, Swedbank and the Royal Bank of Scotland along the way. The stated motive is not to make the money work harder, but to have an exit route in case a small Spanish savings bank fails.

The cost of the operation, according to the figures mentioned in the discussion, is low: the intermediary savings bank charges nothing for the service and the foreign bank applies an average fee of around 20 euros for maintaining the account. A figure that, in the logic of the original idea, seems small compared with the security of holding a deposit outside the Spanish system.

Which foreign bank is best for a non-resident account?

There is no single answer, because it depends on two overlapping variables. The first is the health of the bank: the explicit antiestéticar is that the chosen institution carries the same debt burden as the Spanish savings banks. The second is the country's legislation on account interest. The French case serves as a warning: ordinary current accounts pay no interest at all, so the saver would have to look for other products, although at least a non-resident account costs no more than a resident one.

Some point out that the choice between institutions is misleading. The Royal Bank of Scotland and Natwest have been the same bank under two brands since the former absorbed the latter, with virtually identical products. Geographic diversification, in that case, is pure mirage.

Argentina's corralito as a warning about banking

The conversation soon drifts towards the episode many still remember: the forced conversion of dollar deposits into pesos in Argentina. The debate turns heated. Some argue that Santander and BBVA were plundered by a bankrupt state that changed the rules overnight; others reply that the banks accepted dollar deposits and lent in pesos, and that when the peso collapsed they passed the problem on to savers instead of owning up to their own recklessness. The shared conclusion, grudgingly reached, is that an institution's soundness depends on the country where it operates, not just on its balance sheet.

Alternatives: tax havens, PayPal and scepticism about Spanish risk

Against the maze of fees and paperwork comes the proposal of the Isle of Man, a jurisdiction of its own within the United Kingdom, signed up to the European savings directive, where an account can be peine remotely by sending a passport and proof of address. PayPal also comes up as a digital refuge with no fees, though with no return and the money sitting in cash. The sceptical view, the majority one, points out that the Spanish banking system ranks among the soundest and that setting up this infrastructure just in case is making life complicated for nothing. The point where the analysis stalls: nobody knows how much of the antiestéticar of a collapse is hypothesis and how much is prophecy.