Transfer money from Spain to UK

gatita

Can anyone tell me the cheapest and best way to transfer 50.000 Euros from a Spanish bank (the Cam), to a UK bank. Thank you

lessonlearned

Use one of the special currency exchange companies rather than normal banks. Once the money is in the UK they will simply transfer it to your UK bank for you.

You will get a much better rate of exchange and (usually) no commission charges. They make their money on the fluctuations on currency exchange rather than charges.

I've used HIFX in the past and they were very good.

Francophile

I've used HIFX and Currencies Direct with no problems.

dazza.mk

Make a transfer from Spain to UK of 50 Euros (don't ask Spanish bank to convert to £)
transfer using the BIC & IBAN of your UK account as a reference (not acct no. and sort code)
choose shared charges (rather than buyer or sellers receive all charges).

As long as you follow all these steps it should be transferred received by the British Bank at the same cost as an in country transfer per EU legislation.

this is shown best by First Direct in their specified charges:

"Inward payments received from banks abroadin Sterling above £100£6.00 in currency above £100 equivalent £8.00
(payments up to 50,000 euros or 500,000 Swedish Krona from a country in the EU will be received free of charge provided the BIC and IBAN numbers are provided with the payment). "


* Note if the receiving bank is LloydsTSB I have seen some reports that they use a whole in the legislation to charge a small fee by routing the payment via a subsidiary.

dazza.mk

http://web.archive.org/web/20060507194712/http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/pri/en/oj/dat/2001/l_344/l_34420011228en00130016.pdf

"2. With effect from 1 July 2003 at the latest, charges levied
by an institution in respect of cross-border credit transfers in
euro up to EUR 12 500 shall be the same as the charges levied
by the same institution in respect of corresponding credit
transfers in euro transacted within the Member State in which
the establishment of that institution executing the cross-border
transfer is located.

3. With effect from 1 January 2006 the amount

EUR 12 500 shall be raised to EUR 50 000"

worriedinspain

Sorry to resurrect this thread, but may need to transfer proceeds of sale of house to the UK.

Can anyone please confirm the above post about the cost of doing this directly from my Spanish bank account to a UK account. The receiving account would be Lloyds TSB.

I have found transferring small amounts online to be both quick and cheap, but obviously the amount involved would need a trip to the bank to complete the forms. From past experience the banks here seem to charge as much as they can for anything.

jambosans

Lloyds TSB charge £8 for receiving payments from abroad. See charge details on the link below:-
http://www.lloydstsb.com/rates_and_charges/current_account_charges.asp

It might be worth enquiring about a Lloyds TSB Spain account, as transfers may be discounted/ free to a Lloyds TSB UK account. This is certainly the case with Banco Halifax Hispania who allow free transfers to a same named Halifax or Bank of Scotland account in the UK. It's obviously a lot of effort for the sake of one transfer, but it may be worth considering in future if you are between the UK and Spain.

mi_jardin

Take a look at the halifax. We were living out in Spain and I already had a halifax account, if you open an account at Halifax Espana you can transfer money between the two for only a small fee. Things may have changed by now, but its worth taking a look. We closed the account as soon as we got back to the UK.

worriedinspain

Thank you.

Yes I have checked the Lloyds TSB site now and it seems they only charge £7 to receive payments from abroad.

I also noticed that they charges for sending money abroad have reduced a lot from when we were doing it over 5 years ago.

D1zzy

worriedinspain wrote: »

Thank you.

Yes I have checked the Lloyds TSB site now and it seems they only charge £7 to receive payments from abroad.

I also noticed that they charges for sending money abroad have reduced a lot from when we were doing it over 5 years ago.

Its not what they charge its the Xrate the give you that is the issue. In a similar position a couple of years ago we used Currencies Direct, got a much better rate then the banls would give and had no problems.

markbodega

Gatita

Spanish banks generally charge a percentage of transactional value, rather than a flat TT fee for moving money. This can make them better value on smaller transactions than UK banks, but way more expensive on large sums such as 50k.

These transfer fees can be around 0.5% (sometimes even more), which in this case would be €250 regardless of whether you're transferring the money to a bank in the UK or a currency specialist.

One point to note: quite often if the bank thinks you're moving back to the UK for good and therefore will be closing the account after the transfer they may well look to make more money from the transaction. If however they think they'll be more transfers to follow they may well look to keep your custom. Accept the fact you will need to pay something, but try to get the fee down to 0.1% - 0.2%.

The bank will also look to make money on the exchange rate offered if you decide to use them and more often than not will only give you the tourist rate on your transfers.

Another option you might want to consider is as follows. If you have a cheque book on your Spanish account you could bank the cheque with a UK currency specialist or UK bank. It will take around 6 weeks to clear, but you should avoid all charges (check the Spanish bank doesn’t charge for cheque clearly) and the money you save will be much more than any interest lost. You will get the exchange rate on the day the money clears and again, a currency specialist will normally give a better rate than the bank.

At the very least I'd therefore suggest you shop around. Call CAM and compare the exchange rates offered with those of a currency specialist. Make sure you ask both companies about bank charges as these can mount up. Also when doing the rate comparison make sure you do them one after the other as exchange rates can move quickly. As a general rule of thumb using a currency company will save you around 4% on the amount transferred so it's well worth the additional phone calls. 4% doesn't sound a lot but on €50,000 it's around €2,000 which will compensate for any changes from you Spanish bank!


When choosing a currency specialist, make sure they're authorised and regulated by the FSA for additional peace of mind. You can do this by going to the FSA's website. Also check that the company operates segregated client accounts. Personally if it were me making the transfer, I'd choose one of the larger co's for additional security.

Hope this helps.

Best regards

Mark Bodega