Dollars in the UK

Bellx15

OK - things have moved on, now that Ukraine is allowing us to carry unlimited US Dollars across the border. The result is that we will have $35k in hard currency (notes) to handle when we come back to the UK.

Question 1: I can open a Barclays International or Dollar account with this money. Then I will need to transfer it (eventually) to my Barclays (Sterling) current account. Is this a good way to proceed? On what basis does a bank determine the exchange rate in this circumstance? Presumably it will be much better than tourist rates?

Question 2: I also receive monthly pay cheques in US Dollars drawn on The Bank of America. Should I process these via the same international account?

Thanks for any thoughts or suggestions.

Voyager2002

Check every detail with Barclays before going ahead with this plan. In my experience, dollar-denominated accounts in the UK do not accept deposits in cash dollars: you have to pay in sterling and then the bank converts it into dollars.

Personally, I would spend some time meeting British business people working in the Ukraine and find out how get profits back to the UK -- perhaps by hanging out in international hotels. And your wife's daughter might be able to help: presumably if she made plans to study in the UK, there would be some way for her to wire the money she would need to Britain.

Bellx15

Yes, thanks for that.

Re. the dollars, do you know whether this applies to Citibank UK? Someone suggested opening two accounts with them, one US$s and the other £s, transferring across. It seems that whichever way you try to get your own money, there are obstacles! (i.e., someone else makes a profit).

Daughter already just finishing her PhD in Ukraine - so no more studying!

We are not in Ukraine at present, but would you happen to know of a forum or discussion group for such business people?

Please allow me to explain further:

In addition to this lump sum in Dollars, I also receive a small monthly pay cheque in dollars drawn on BofA. Getting that processed into Sterling without enormous exchange and fee losses is a real problem. So, I was hoping to be able to handle the two issues at once, by opening a Dollar account, and ultimately converting the money by transferring it into my Sterling current account.

olly300

Bellx15 if you turn up with a large sum in Dollars at any UK bank they will presume you are money laundering and are likely to not accept it. At worse they will report you to the police making your life difficult.

I suggest you do as Voyager2002 said and ask at international hotels on the best way to move actual cash into the UK without getting these problems.

There is no cheap way in the UK for transfering regular sums of money with out incurring exchange fees. The only thing I suggest you do is ask your employer to transfer the money electronically into your bank account as this is cheaper and much quicker than processing foreign cheques.

UK banks are allowed to take 6 months to process foreign cheques. They are normally quicker than this and take about 3 weeks there as electronic processing takes a maximum of 7 days. You can also incur extra fees which the bank may not be able to tell you the exact amount of about until after the cheque is drawn due to the fact they have to be posted back to the bank in America and there may be other banks involved in the process.

Bellx15

It is probably going to appear as though i am being deliberately difficult here, but please believe that I am having genuine problems with this.

Point 1. The US University that pays me monthly is inflexible regarding payment to employees overseas. It will only pay to my home address, and by cheque. Per month, not one cheque to cover the year. So fees are extortionate at this end to get those cheques processed. That's the problem there. I lose more than 10% of my part-time pay this way.

Point 2. Regarding the Ukrainian US Dollars, I just seem to be stuck now. Ukrainian banks offer transfer services to people with business accounts there, but not to personal customers. The personal bank account in Ukraine holds them as Dollars. I might eventually have to send them over by Moneygram, after all, and suffer the charges.

Bellx15

I should add that the Ukrainian bank will not even provide a banker's draft or electronic transfer, to personal customers.

Voyager2002

Some thoughts:

I think you posted earlier that your wife is a businesswoman: surely with a bit of ingenuity she could qualify for a business account there, enabling you to use this method to transfer the money. Presumably that would be the same facility that foreign business people use to remit profits.

Daughter might perhaps be able to help. I was not suggesting that she should actually study again, but rather investigate how a Ukrainian (from a well-off family), wishing to study in the UK with the family paying all the costs, would transfer the required funds. If such a facility exists she could perhaps a desire to study English in London and use that as a reason to transfer the money.

I think you might get on better with your cheque from the USA than with the cash dollars from Ukraine. A dollar account in the UK might well accept a dollar cheque as a deposit, but would probably insist that cash dollars were changed into cash sterling (basically at tourist rates); and then the cash sterling could be deposited and converted into back into dollars to go into the dollar account. However, my experience is out of date, so you need to ask about this. Just do not assume that the banks will be logical, nor that they will be helpful in how they organise things. The only certainty is that if they can possibly impose a charge, they will do so.

Just a thought about the dollar cheques: they could certainly be paid into a US bank account. Do you still have one? And transferring funds from a US bank account into a Fidelity Money Funds account, and from there into a UK account in sterling, is free and easy.