If at first, you don’t succeed…
I went with one of my clients to a bank in a higher-end commercial center in Medellin to help him open his first bank account in Colombia. He had recently purchased an apartment and needed a bank account to pay his utilities, HOA fees, and just all around make his life easier in Colombia. From the minute we spoke to the bank representative and they found out my client was a foreigner, we encountered nothing but hostility. They said foreigners are not allowed to open bank accounts unless they own property in Colombia. We told them he did. They demanded better copies of the documents we held in our hands. We went and got them. They asked for his cédula, passport, proof of title, proof of income, and tax information. We provided all we could. They said it wasn't sufficient. They finally name-checked banking regulations and told us, “No, it is IMPOSSIBLE for your client to open a bank account in Colombia”, before showing us the door. My client was visibly annoyed as we left. Not only had they wasted over an hour of our time deliberately stonewalling us, but each teller had acted as if we were inconveniencing them just by existing.
After some deep breaths and attempts to laugh off the negativity, we ventured to the second floor to try again. The second bank we went to was just another branch of the same bank we had just been to, but it was like night and day. There was no attitude change when we told them we wanted to open a bank account for a foreigner. They asked for lots of documents, as any bank would, but it felt like they were collecting information and not just trying to hinder us. The process took nearly three hours (we arrived at lunchtime and this is still Colombia after all) but never was there any indication that we would leave that branch without accomplishing our mission nor any talk of it being IMPOSSIBLE due to banking regulations.
Banking regulations don’t change between branches of the same bank. What changes are the people you are dealing with. And in Colombia, more so than in other countries, that makes all the difference. In my practice, I have encountered notaries who state they can’t register my client’s foreign marriage, and yet it’s registered without fuss by another notary. I’ve had a Migración officer in one city saying a client can’t get a salvoconducto and then having it granted by a Migración officer in another city. Persistence is key in Colombia. There is a lot more bureaucratic discretion and differing interpretations of the same rules. Living here, you will soon learn that what is IMPOSSIBLE for one person may not be IMPOSSIBLE for everyone.
