Hello,
I just came to the Netherlands as skilled migrant. There are many of them now coming to the country, and traditional old school banks is a difficult choice for new migrants. bunq on the other side is one of few which does not require BSN immediately to create an account. There are still some difficulties though, therefore I'm suggesting this idea.
I believe this practice can be significantly improved, and in this case bunq will get many more loyal customers for whom bunq will be their first bank in the Netherlands and in EU. Good thing is because of skilled migrant status, these people are:
- already validated by the government
- by definition already have job contract (otherwise no skilled migrant status can be granted)
- confirmed by their employers to have rather high salary (also one of criteria of skilled migrant) which would eventually go to bunq account
The gap which currently exists is that bunq does not fully qualify skilled migrants. As skilled migrant I can only register using my foreign passport, and in my case the account I got was a "refugee account" with some significant limitations.
I suggest that bunq can create fully functional accounts for skilled migrants based on foreign passport, MVV (D visa which confirms that skilled migrant has come to the Netherlands to work with rather high salary, and this is confirmed by both employer and the government), and job contract maybe. The good thing is that these prospective customers are less risky by definition, and the competition with other banks is lower because of most traditional banks being old school and not expat-friendly.
I hope it helps to improve and bring new customers to bunq.
Best regards,
Anton
