Problems opening a Joint Account

Went into my local branch of B.O.I. and asked to make my current account a joint account with my wife's name added, you would not believe the paperwork we were given to fill out, I was told we have to close our seperate accounts and open a brand new joint account completely, now this is too much hassle as we would have to change all direct debits/standing orders etc, does anyone have any advice on what to do or are all banks the same now.

Why would you have to close your existing account?

Try a different bank. Ulster seem to be the most reasonable these days.

AIB are the same, tons of paperwork, decided to keep separate accounts. However, will be moving bank anyway over the next few weeks so will start from scratch.

Same situation here. BOI switch team have confirmed for me that we can switch another persons AIB account into an existing BOI account.
So run one personal BOI account rather than the hassle of closing that and AIB at the same time. And get two cards to use with it.

Are there any downsides to this, other than simply not having your own personal account?

dariuscork said:

Went into my local branch of B.O.I. and asked to make my current account a joint account with my wife's name added, you would not believe the paperwork we were given to fill out, I was told we have to close our seperate accounts and open a brand new joint account completely, now this is too much hassle as we would have to change all direct debits/standing orders etc, does anyone have any advice on what to do or are all banks the same now.

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What about just cross authorizing each other on your single accounts? Still paper work, but at least you would not have to change all your standing orders etc..

Most of the paperwork are caused by complying with money laundering requirements. Also when moving from a sole to a joint account it is better to make a clean break as disputes can happen later. I mean closing sole account and open new joint account.

dariuscork said:

, I was told we have to close our seperate accounts and open a brand new joint account completely, .

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I don't understand why you need to close your separate accounts?

I opened a new joint account 3 years ago and as far as I recall it required a long form, most of which I refused to fill out as they had all our details already, after much arguing the girl just accepted the most basic details and us signing the form and we needed proof of identy. I think they were looking for details of salary and other stuff which is not needed to open an account when you already have an account. I believe the banks are using the new money laundering legislation to get customers to fill out a lot of detail in order to target customers with their sales people.

Other than name, address, and proof of id and maybe of a salary coming in why do they need any more info.

They don't even need proof of salary.