A Trip to the Bank

Did you see the remake of The Bourne Identity with Matt Damon from a few years ago?  Great movie!  At the beginning of the movie, he discovers the number of a Swiss bank account and proceeds to Zurich to search for clues to find out who he is.  (You should know the scenes aren't really filmed in Zurich, they're filmed in Prague, in the Czech Republic, but no matter). He's subjected to all sorts of security, including a hand scanner, before he can access his safety deposit box.

Well, we, too, needed to open up a bank account.  So the company arranged for us to go see an account manager at Credit Suisse.  Yes, we were going to get our own Swiss account.  Not numbered, to be sure, but an account nevertheless.

And the security wasn't quite as extreme as in the movie, but the experience was interesting.  You check in at the front desk downstairs with the name of the person you're there to see.  They check their list and if you're on it, they direct you to an elevator.  Elevators, by the way, about a fifth of the size they are in the US.  They're narrow and quite cramped!  And so we were directed into the elevator and told it would take us up to the sixth floor and that we needn't (should'n't) touch anything.  In fact, I'm not sure we could have changed the floor destination if we'd wanted to.

On the sixth floor, we were met as soon as the door opened and whisked to a private conference room where we were served tea and coffee.  The meeting was actually quite short.  Banking is a bit of Catch 22 in Switzerland.  You need to have a bank account to pay for a residence, but need a residence to get a bank account.  So we essentially just signed papers that said we could open an account via email once we had a confirmed residence.  (This was before we had the Duillier house).

After the meeting, we were shown to a separate elevator, different than the first, which led us back to the ground floor and to a rear exit that was different from the entrance.  And with that, we were back outside.

All very cloak and dagger.  Not quite to the Bourne level, but exciting, nevertheless.  The Swiss take their privacy seriously!