Here's the backstory...
I go to Banco Popular on Maximo Gomez Ave near the Fine Arts Building on September 3rd. My intent is to open a simple bank account. I bring with me all necessary documents- passport, bank statements, two years of taxes, identifications, etc. I wait 4 hours in the bank - they ask for my social security number and telephone number and say they will contact me within 2 weeks. I have all these documents in hand because I'm purchasing a condo in Santo Domingo Este.
One month passes - No response. I call Banco Popular. They don't even have my passport or information listed in their system. At this point it's the beginning of October - and nothing has been done. Customer service says I need to go back to the branch office of Banco Popular. So I book a ticket and fly back...
Walking into the bank and I go to customer service. They have no record of my documents- only my name and social security on the initial form. They ask that I wait 2-3 days so they can investigate.
At this point - I contact law enforcement. I'm concerned about identity theft. Miraculously, the following day.- all of my personal and confidential documents were magically found!
So I proceed with opening the bank account. We sit for another 2 hours, verifying information - they say that it will be another week or two to review the information.
Okay so NOW..... At the present time, I've received an email from the branch manager asking for me to translate all of the financial documents I provided to Banco Popular - and it's necessary in order to open the account.
Is this f**king normal!??
Banco Popular - The Headache Continues
Yes very normal.
They would not open a account for me when I tried few years back.
I bought my property and the seller used BP. I wired money from out of the country and they held up the money for a month to investigate.
It took 3 weeks for us to get the approval to open our accounts. Because my husband was working for a bank at the time, they were being extra diligent. For Americans, they have to verify with the IRS (or maybe someone else in Treasury) as well as their own anti-money laundering process.
We ended up opening our account at Banco Santa Cruz. The only item we had to have translated was the letter from our bank that stated we were customers in good standing and had accounts with them for XX years.
Even with the approval in place, we spent at least 2 hours there at the branch to actually open the account. Our attorney was with us to translate, so that wasn't the reason it took so long! It was just a very drawn out process.
Once we moved here, we opened a second account (in USD) with BSC and that was much simpler. I made the mistake of wiring in over $10k, so I had an added step of showing source of funds, but even that was a pretty simple process. I just
downloaded bank statements and emailed them to the branch manager.
From what I've been told, now that we have an account at BSC and our cedulas, it would be much easier to open an account at another bank if we needed to. We've thought about opening an account with BanReservas because there are somethings that can only be done with that bank - and some cheap money transfer options that only work with them.
Looks like for some people become a nightmare to open a Bank acct, shame to read those problems.
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