HELP - currency exchange account required

lizzysmot

I wonder if anyone has experience of this and can help? My parents are selling property in France and intend to build a bungalow on our land (Wales) so we can look after them. They want an account that they can pay Euros into in France, as and when we need funds for the planning and building process. We need to be able to withdraw money/pay bills over here in sterling. They don't want to be stung on either a poor exchange rate, or charges/commission for currency exchange. Does such an account exist???

jonesMUFCforever

Nope.
You are dealing with two different currencies in two different countries.

What do you consider a bad exchange rate?
If your parents move the Euros from France in one transaction they will only be charged once.
They can ask about the French equivalent of foreign exchange dealers over there to get the bank's best rate into sterling.

lizzysmot

how can you tell if currency will be exchanged using tourist rate or business rate - it can make quite a difference to the rate on offer. No exchange facilities seem to make this clear.

jonesMUFCforever

An international payment will always use business rates not the cash rates you would get for cash.

Millennium

Use a broker to get the best rates. Do not use your bank under any circumstances as they charge a lot more and the money takes an age to come through!

High street banks tend to set their rates daily. So as well as giving poor rates, they also have to allow for any fluctualtions in the day's rate so that also means a poorer rate. A broker has a screen showing the rate there and then.

I use Sterling Exchange who I have found to be very good and give good rates. https://www.sterlingexchange.co.uk

The process is very straightforward, and the funds are usually transfered the next day with no bank to bank transfer fee.

Have a search and look for explanations of 'spot buys' (you get the rate as it is now) or forward contracts (A Forward contract allows you to fix favourable exchange rates for a specific length of time, thus protecting yourself against market fluctuations).

Good luck!

lizzysmot

thanks for that:beer: , but I'm obviously a real novice as far as this is concerned so here's another question for you. If parents are not going to use a bank in France but a broker instead then how would we recive the currency here in the UK. Does it go into an account over here, and if so, will that bank charge us? If it does go into a bank account, is there one that you folks out there would recommend as good for receiving international transfers? If it doesn't go into an account then how do we receive it? Thanks so much to all who are contributing to this post, it's all very new to me .