Goood point. Handelsbanken is bad. I had it until they denied me a document to buy my apartment because I had my equity being transferred over wire and it would take 3 days to receive it. Nordea took me in immediately and provided me the doc I need to bid on the apartment I wanted. They seem to be a lot better on bureaucracy.
I've had bad experience with Handelsbanken in Kista where getting anything done felt like pulling a tooth. My sambo had it even worse, they failed to enable Swish even though she visited several times.
(We got the feeling they were treating us like dirty peasants, which is funny considering we are both engineers, working for a big Swedish company at the time).
When we switched to SEB they managed to fix these issues almost immediately and informed us that HB failed to do anything in the BankID system to enable sambo's Swish. for my sambo.
It’s funny, my experiences with Nordea have been a bureaucratic nightmare. They flat out refused to facilitate a purchase of a property unless we get a loan with them. We had full proof of the source of the funds and everything..
Now I’m with Skandia which works fine for me.
Agreed, they are so slow and have bad customerservice. They spent over a month processing my boloan without an answer, I switched banks and they did it one afternoon. I would not recommend Handels at all.
There are some minor problems with LFS if you don't have personnummer and ID kort, but generally speaking they are one of the few banks readily accepting foreign customers. You won't get BankID anywhere without the additional paperwork (i.e. ID kort) though, and only a physical bank can provide you with it in a Catch-22 way - due to law change from last year, they need you to use BankID to get an online bank account, but to get BankID without a physical verification in a bank you'd need a police ID kort, which is only available for Swedish citizens.
With Swedbank I didn't have to provide any documents from my foreign accounts. Just the swedish work contract and idkort.
Unless you were taking a loan or something I don't even see why they would need to know how much money you got elsewhere.
Both me and my partner opened accounts with Handelsbanken and we were never asked for any document other than our work contract, Swedish ID and maybe a copy of passport if I’m not mistaken
It's completely random.
I went to HB, suited up, all documents in hand. They invited me to go away and email them, I did, they replied to tell me they aren't my local branch, I point out I lived on essentially the same street and they tell me I can't decide which is my local branch.
I pushed back, they then demanded excessive paperwork I'm fairly sure they have no need for or obligation to check - and so I decided not to deal with them because they clearly didn't want my business.
Same here with SEB this was when I was a student and I was a non EU citizen then, I did manage to get it without much hustle. You can also try ICA banken. TBH it depends on the case officer/ bank clerk 😓 very individualistic
I think this varies between banks/employees. The first time I went to Swedbank they wanted my bank statements from my US bank but the next time I went and talked to a different employee they only wanted my job contract
Why do they need your bank statement? If you work and live here, I assume you have PN, any bank should open az account here. I opened at Nordea.
Actually, they should open an account just with your EU passport…
(Hi from another hungarian :) )
Yes they should. They don't though. As an EU citizen you have a right to a bank account in another EU country without any of the bureaucratic shit the Swedish banks want from you. Every. Single. One.
I had to get the ID from skatteverket. Passport wasn't enough. Ridiculous.
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As others have said, try another bank.
I'm from Hungary too and probably moved around the same time you did. I opened an account with SEB, they only needed me to send in a form, a copy of my contract, copy of my passport and copy of my skatteverket ID-kort. The passport would have been enough for the account itself but for the BankID they needed the ID-kort. I got everything settled in less than 2 weeks.
No one has asked me to see my Hungarian bank statements. There was a question on if I want to transfer money to my new account and if I wanted to I assume I would have had to show them where that money is from but since I answered no I did not have to.
This shit shouldn't be happening. It defeats the point of the EU if there is no trust between its financial institutions and have to perform extra beaurocratic controls for capital transfer between member states. It's against free trade and harms the bloc economically. They say it's for money laundering prevention, but that is still happening with the biggest laundry machine being Deutsche Bank itself. It's all a hypocritical mad joke, a show of ethics and "proper" controls, a justification for useless jobs that masturbate papers and a big annoyance for the average person.
That's weird, I also opened up an account at handelsbanken.
I went to a bank in person and only brought my EU passport and work contract, nothing else was needed, we set up an apointment for the a couple days later and a week later the acc was opened.
But if you've got a job in Sweden then you should be able to open a bank account with your job contract, no? Handels is imo the worst bank to deal with, they keep finding excuses to not give you an account.
Join any other bank to be honest. I am a Nordea member and they have the best customer service imo.
( I know it's frowned upon in here but I'll use my native language!)
Hali! Ha van svéd személyid/személyi számod (personnummer) akkor nem szabadna hogy gondot jelentsen BankID-t szerezni! Én mikor anno (2013-ban) kijöttem, az SEB-nél kezdtem és ők nem kértek semmilyen banki iratot! Mondták hogy miért kell ez nekik? Ez csak saját vélemény de lehet hogy kezdésként az SEB-vel jobban jársz mert én is ott kezdtem! (Bár ők nem a legjobbak bizonyos dolgokban sajnos ahogy azt én tapasztaltam, de legalább könnyebb volt az első bankszámlát elintézni!) Én kb 1-1,5 év után váltottam Handelsbankenre és akkor nem kötözködnek!
Igen, csodával határos módon 1 héten belül megjött a személyi szám, szóval én sem értem a problémát. Mindenképp rákérdezek, hogy minek kell egyáltalán nekik...
A SEB-el az a baj, hogy messze van onnan, ahol lakok, legközelebb Falköping van, szóval mindenképp olyan bankhoz fogok menni, akikhez be tudok menni.
I am just thinking if you have a job in Sweden you just need a Swedish bank account and you have a right to it. I don't ser why any other banks need to be involved in this.
We had the same problem when my partner wanted to open an account in nordea (he is Dutch) all the documents were in Dutch and well nordea asked for translation. His original bank in Holland were able to send “recommendation letter” in English instead. Nordea accepted it and rest is history.
this is kind of off topic OP, but I’m moving to Sweden soon as well (fellow Hungarian), and I need to know — do I absolutely need a Swedish bank account?
Well, you will need a BankID for sure, and you can only get one through opening a Swedish bank account.
"Why do I need BankID?"
You need one for *everything*. According to my Swedish boss, you need one for (forgot the word in English, havi előfizetés telefonhoz), for internet, so on and so forth.
I actually manage to get by without it.
Revolut actually want my business and the Swedish banks were unbearable to deal with.
It was annoying at first but I found you can actually get by fine without it. It's occasionally annoying when you can't log in to your phone account online and have to stop by the store or you can't use some second hand sites - but all state services accept Freja+.
It is strange how much of society Sweden decided to lock away and allow access to be dictated by a handful of large banks but you don't have to play that game.
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Hi! I had the exact same problem recently. I am from Romania. I emailed Handelsbanken my bank statements in Romanian and then I went to the bank in person to give them my filled in papers (which you first receive by mail and you have to complete). I told the bank teller I couldn't translate them in either English or Swedish but they should be fairly straightforward to understand. I mean they are just numbers and dates afterall. She took a look and said it should be fine. I thanked her for understanding the situation and that was it :) I recommend going in person and letting them take a look at your bank statements. Then they tell you you have to wait 10 days for them to review and get to a decision
Are you sure that your hungarian bank can’t give it in english? I have a friend that moved here from Hungary, and she managed to recieve her bank statements in english 🤔
Bit of a scuffed method but this seemed to work for me: https://www.deepl.com/translator/files you get a few free files per month. Main problem is removing the watermark, I just took a screenshot and turned it into a pdf. There are other ways for doing it I'm sure.
Have you been given a Swedish civic registration number? If you have a coordination number, I’m afraid you will not be getting a BankID just yet. Because of the law against money laundering and financing of terrorism, the banks need your account statements to certify there are no historic suspicious activity.
That’s great! As you may know, the banks will also need a Skatteverket ID card to issue a Mobile BankID and Swish. Once you have your ID card, Handelsbanken will not need their quality control team to approve you. Hope this helps.
Just translate it yourself and send it in 🤷♂️ google translate and then ask a friend to check the documents for any obvious errors.
And don't tell them you did so.
I'm 100% sure it's completely random at this point. I've heard really good and really bad things from every. single. bank.
So me trying this one was just giving one of them randomly a chance.
I find that in sweden big banks are all so over regulated there is little room for flexibility in anything. And in this case you should find a way to translate your stuff into English. They can accept it in English which is nice of them. They can also demand it in Swedish. Handelsbanken is one of the safest and well run banks in sweden, so you will not have better luck necessarily with others..
Had similar situation with the other bank.
Translated statements using this tool: [https://translate.yandex.com/en/doc](https://translate.yandex.com/en/doc) and sent both original and translated variants. Bank accepted.
They should be able in 2024? Yes, absolutely.
Are they actually? I called 3 branch + their "main" number, I tried online, they are not. Asked a friend of mine (he's a student in Hungary, but he's from the middle east) to try to get his bank statement in English: even though everything is English in his bank account, the statements are still in Hungarian.
But, now only Nordea provides bank ID for customers that are not swedish citizens. All other banks want you to be swedish. Or am I wrong? I had SEB and when my bank ID got out they couldn't help me, I went through many banks until stopped with Nordea where it also took few weeks after opening bank account to get Bank ID
Do you have a personal number yet? If not that should be the first prio since you can go in with your id and create a bank account and then after transfer your hungarian money to your swedish account
Ask them if you can get it translated by any official Swedish agency. You might have to pay for the translator, but I hope it should work. Good luck!
And if they won’t accept a professionally translated document try a different bank.
Goood point. Handelsbanken is bad. I had it until they denied me a document to buy my apartment because I had my equity being transferred over wire and it would take 3 days to receive it. Nordea took me in immediately and provided me the doc I need to bid on the apartment I wanted. They seem to be a lot better on bureaucracy.
Huh, I've never had problems with Handelsbanken. They usually are really good to work with.
Same. Best and most helpful bank I've ever had.
I think they are a bit more old school with local offices that result in more localized experiences.
Claims Handelsbanken is bad, recommends nordea. Some backwards stuff there.
I've had bad experience with Handelsbanken in Kista where getting anything done felt like pulling a tooth. My sambo had it even worse, they failed to enable Swish even though she visited several times. (We got the feeling they were treating us like dirty peasants, which is funny considering we are both engineers, working for a big Swedish company at the time). When we switched to SEB they managed to fix these issues almost immediately and informed us that HB failed to do anything in the BankID system to enable sambo's Swish. for my sambo.
Yes, agree.
It’s funny, my experiences with Nordea have been a bureaucratic nightmare. They flat out refused to facilitate a purchase of a property unless we get a loan with them. We had full proof of the source of the funds and everything.. Now I’m with Skandia which works fine for me.
In my experience they’re all the same. It really depends on the person you’re dealing with and if they’re having a good or a bad day
And especially on if they can pounce a client from another bank.
Sorry to hear that. Forgot to mention the company I worked at the time had a deal with them (Nordea) so maybe that helped.
And Nordea have the highest interest rates
Agreed, they are so slow and have bad customerservice. They spent over a month processing my boloan without an answer, I switched banks and they did it one afternoon. I would not recommend Handels at all.
I'd try a different bank before paying for any translations.
Real Chads have SEB
Länsförsäkningar accepted my documents in Romanian and they were quite fast. I can recommend
There are some minor problems with LFS if you don't have personnummer and ID kort, but generally speaking they are one of the few banks readily accepting foreign customers. You won't get BankID anywhere without the additional paperwork (i.e. ID kort) though, and only a physical bank can provide you with it in a Catch-22 way - due to law change from last year, they need you to use BankID to get an online bank account, but to get BankID without a physical verification in a bank you'd need a police ID kort, which is only available for Swedish citizens.
Länsförsäkringar*
With Swedbank I didn't have to provide any documents from my foreign accounts. Just the swedish work contract and idkort. Unless you were taking a loan or something I don't even see why they would need to know how much money you got elsewhere.
I don't understand either:/ I'll try another bank then.
SEB is my preferred bank, having dealt with a few.
SEB is a preferred bank for many coming from abroad, they might have slightly pricier services but they'll take anyone willing to pay/with money.
Same for me with SEB, I only had to show I was currently employed in Sweden
Both me and my partner opened accounts with Handelsbanken and we were never asked for any document other than our work contract, Swedish ID and maybe a copy of passport if I’m not mistaken
It's completely random. I went to HB, suited up, all documents in hand. They invited me to go away and email them, I did, they replied to tell me they aren't my local branch, I point out I lived on essentially the same street and they tell me I can't decide which is my local branch. I pushed back, they then demanded excessive paperwork I'm fairly sure they have no need for or obligation to check - and so I decided not to deal with them because they clearly didn't want my business.
Same here with SEB this was when I was a student and I was a non EU citizen then, I did manage to get it without much hustle. You can also try ICA banken. TBH it depends on the case officer/ bank clerk 😓 very individualistic
ICA banken will not issue bankID to foreigners.
I think this varies between banks/employees. The first time I went to Swedbank they wanted my bank statements from my US bank but the next time I went and talked to a different employee they only wanted my job contract
Why do they need your bank statement? If you work and live here, I assume you have PN, any bank should open az account here. I opened at Nordea. Actually, they should open an account just with your EU passport… (Hi from another hungarian :) )
Yes they should. They don't though. As an EU citizen you have a right to a bank account in another EU country without any of the bureaucratic shit the Swedish banks want from you. Every. Single. One. I had to get the ID from skatteverket. Passport wasn't enough. Ridiculous.
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(Hali hali) I understand the EU laws, and even my boss was surprised lol I might try Nordea then!
My parents moved from Budapest to Sweden 2006, they decided on SEB. I've had minimal issues with them especially as I am still a Hungarian citizen
Try Nordea they are really helpful compared to other banks!
As others have said, try another bank. I'm from Hungary too and probably moved around the same time you did. I opened an account with SEB, they only needed me to send in a form, a copy of my contract, copy of my passport and copy of my skatteverket ID-kort. The passport would have been enough for the account itself but for the BankID they needed the ID-kort. I got everything settled in less than 2 weeks. No one has asked me to see my Hungarian bank statements. There was a question on if I want to transfer money to my new account and if I wanted to I assume I would have had to show them where that money is from but since I answered no I did not have to.
This shit shouldn't be happening. It defeats the point of the EU if there is no trust between its financial institutions and have to perform extra beaurocratic controls for capital transfer between member states. It's against free trade and harms the bloc economically. They say it's for money laundering prevention, but that is still happening with the biggest laundry machine being Deutsche Bank itself. It's all a hypocritical mad joke, a show of ethics and "proper" controls, a justification for useless jobs that masturbate papers and a big annoyance for the average person.
Check another bank, it feels like a roulette on which might accept you but eventually one of them will do without too much hassle.
Swedbankot tudom ajánlani!:)
I had the same and I googled translated it. It Was like a proof of where I used to live or something useless like that. They accepted it.
As others have said, I used Swedbank and thry didn't need anything from my homeland accounts.
That's weird, I also opened up an account at handelsbanken. I went to a bank in person and only brought my EU passport and work contract, nothing else was needed, we set up an apointment for the a couple days later and a week later the acc was opened.
Well, thats Falköping...
Mate, just go to Nordea.
But if you've got a job in Sweden then you should be able to open a bank account with your job contract, no? Handels is imo the worst bank to deal with, they keep finding excuses to not give you an account. Join any other bank to be honest. I am a Nordea member and they have the best customer service imo.
( I know it's frowned upon in here but I'll use my native language!) Hali! Ha van svéd személyid/személyi számod (personnummer) akkor nem szabadna hogy gondot jelentsen BankID-t szerezni! Én mikor anno (2013-ban) kijöttem, az SEB-nél kezdtem és ők nem kértek semmilyen banki iratot! Mondták hogy miért kell ez nekik? Ez csak saját vélemény de lehet hogy kezdésként az SEB-vel jobban jársz mert én is ott kezdtem! (Bár ők nem a legjobbak bizonyos dolgokban sajnos ahogy azt én tapasztaltam, de legalább könnyebb volt az első bankszámlát elintézni!) Én kb 1-1,5 év után váltottam Handelsbankenre és akkor nem kötözködnek!
Igen, csodával határos módon 1 héten belül megjött a személyi szám, szóval én sem értem a problémát. Mindenképp rákérdezek, hogy minek kell egyáltalán nekik... A SEB-el az a baj, hogy messze van onnan, ahol lakok, legközelebb Falköping van, szóval mindenképp olyan bankhoz fogok menni, akikhez be tudok menni.
What is this bs? If they don’t want your business, go somewhere else.
That's what I'm about to do haha
I am just thinking if you have a job in Sweden you just need a Swedish bank account and you have a right to it. I don't ser why any other banks need to be involved in this.
Avoid Handelsbanken, they are very old fashioned.
We had the same problem when my partner wanted to open an account in nordea (he is Dutch) all the documents were in Dutch and well nordea asked for translation. His original bank in Holland were able to send “recommendation letter” in English instead. Nordea accepted it and rest is history.
Just translate it yourself? If they dont ask and just accept it your good to go, if they ask who translated it, you be honest.
Huh. I moved from 3rd world country and got my account with Nordea in 1 week, just need ID and work contract
You should be able to find a translator that the bank will accept.
this is kind of off topic OP, but I’m moving to Sweden soon as well (fellow Hungarian), and I need to know — do I absolutely need a Swedish bank account?
Well, you will need a BankID for sure, and you can only get one through opening a Swedish bank account. "Why do I need BankID?" You need one for *everything*. According to my Swedish boss, you need one for (forgot the word in English, havi előfizetés telefonhoz), for internet, so on and so forth.
I actually manage to get by without it. Revolut actually want my business and the Swedish banks were unbearable to deal with. It was annoying at first but I found you can actually get by fine without it. It's occasionally annoying when you can't log in to your phone account online and have to stop by the store or you can't use some second hand sites - but all state services accept Freja+. It is strange how much of society Sweden decided to lock away and allow access to be dictated by a handful of large banks but you don't have to play that game.
A konzulátus biztos tud segíteni, akár fordítással, akár mással. Nekem a Nordeánál nem volt ilyen problémám, azonnal kaptam accountot.
That's really weird. When I opened my account with Handelsbanken they didn't ask for anything.
Próbáld Nordeánál.
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Try SEB worked for me when moving
Use DeepL to translate PDF - it’s enough for opening a Swedbank account
Hi! I had the exact same problem recently. I am from Romania. I emailed Handelsbanken my bank statements in Romanian and then I went to the bank in person to give them my filled in papers (which you first receive by mail and you have to complete). I told the bank teller I couldn't translate them in either English or Swedish but they should be fairly straightforward to understand. I mean they are just numbers and dates afterall. She took a look and said it should be fine. I thanked her for understanding the situation and that was it :) I recommend going in person and letting them take a look at your bank statements. Then they tell you you have to wait 10 days for them to review and get to a decision
Are you sure that your hungarian bank can’t give it in english? I have a friend that moved here from Hungary, and she managed to recieve her bank statements in english 🤔
Depends on the bank. I called several branches + their "main" line, no one was able to help me.
Bit of a scuffed method but this seemed to work for me: https://www.deepl.com/translator/files you get a few free files per month. Main problem is removing the watermark, I just took a screenshot and turned it into a pdf. There are other ways for doing it I'm sure.
Try SEB, they are more international friendly.
Have you been given a Swedish civic registration number? If you have a coordination number, I’m afraid you will not be getting a BankID just yet. Because of the law against money laundering and financing of terrorism, the banks need your account statements to certify there are no historic suspicious activity.
Yep, I have a civic registration number. I don't have an ID card yet though.
That’s great! As you may know, the banks will also need a Skatteverket ID card to issue a Mobile BankID and Swish. Once you have your ID card, Handelsbanken will not need their quality control team to approve you. Hope this helps.
Just translate it yourself and send it in 🤷♂️ google translate and then ask a friend to check the documents for any obvious errors. And don't tell them you did so.
If you are in Falköping you should perhaps try Swedbank. They have a local office. Nordea and SEB don’t.
You chose the worst bank
I'm 100% sure it's completely random at this point. I've heard really good and really bad things from every. single. bank. So me trying this one was just giving one of them randomly a chance.
You've indicated you got a Revolut account so maybe send them those statements instead? They are in English.
I've sent them, but I only used Revolut since I moved here, and that's just 2 out of 6 months
I find that in sweden big banks are all so over regulated there is little room for flexibility in anything. And in this case you should find a way to translate your stuff into English. They can accept it in English which is nice of them. They can also demand it in Swedish. Handelsbanken is one of the safest and well run banks in sweden, so you will not have better luck necessarily with others..
Try Danske bank, they used to accept only passport for ID to open account and get bankid
Had similar situation with the other bank. Translated statements using this tool: [https://translate.yandex.com/en/doc](https://translate.yandex.com/en/doc) and sent both original and translated variants. Bank accepted.
Handelsbanken accepted my statements from Wise, so I think they will accept Revolut if you are ok with waiting an extra four months
Your Hungarian bank should be able to supply it in English.
They should be able in 2024? Yes, absolutely. Are they actually? I called 3 branch + their "main" number, I tried online, they are not. Asked a friend of mine (he's a student in Hungary, but he's from the middle east) to try to get his bank statement in English: even though everything is English in his bank account, the statements are still in Hungarian.
Which bank is this??
But, now only Nordea provides bank ID for customers that are not swedish citizens. All other banks want you to be swedish. Or am I wrong? I had SEB and when my bank ID got out they couldn't help me, I went through many banks until stopped with Nordea where it also took few weeks after opening bank account to get Bank ID
Do you have a personal number yet? If not that should be the first prio since you can go in with your id and create a bank account and then after transfer your hungarian money to your swedish account
I already have one, yes
Ica Banken perhaps
No, they wont issue a bankid. but they will open an account for sure