My investments locked at the bank

This morning I've learnt that most of the savings in Amazon, Facebook, Nokia stocks that I've worked hard to earn in my twenties got effectively "locked" at the bank. I thought it only happens in shithole countries. Boy! I was wrong.

I am a Finnish citizen (dual citizenship) currently living in the UK. Brexit's trading limitation for persons with a UK residency – effect 1st of January 2021 meant that I can no longer use online banking to sell my investments.

I called the bank today and learnt that the effective fee for making a sale has increased 210% to an upward of 1000% because sales must now be done manually. The current fee is 2% of total value or a minimum of 168.9 Euros/ transaction.

A 300 Euros investment in Nokia would cost 168.9 Euros to sell, a whooping 56.3%. What the fuck!

As a customer, I was not informed about this in advance. Now I have two choices: Have my investment locked forever in this bank or pay the 20x fee to get out of my investment (close to 1000 EUR fee to make 5 sales).

To add insult to injury if I had moved my investments into fucking BTC when I moved from Finland to the UK I would have sit on a million worth of BTC now. Of course I'll pay the right amount of UK tax if I decide to cash out, not fucking 56% though.

To think Europe is one of the most developed places on earth when it comes to banking and customer rights!