Moving to Oz, moving funds, what is the best way?

OzBound

Hi,

I was recomended this site by a friend.

Myself and my husband are moving to Oz in january for his work. We have lived in the UK all of our lives so it is going to be a complete life changing experience but something we are looking forward to.

We are due to exchange on our house sale in the first week of january and will have around 130,000 to move.

What would be the best bank / way to move the money as we have been told the exchange rate is curently very bad and we dont want to get ripped off (had bad experiences with banks in our life)

Has anybody done the same or have any advice?

Thanks

Sally

lilham

I've done it the other way round before, but I'm not sure if it's the way for the best deal. We opened a UK bank account via a bank in NZ. At the time it's a Lloyd's subsidiary. Alternatively, if one of you are already in Oz, you can open a bank account there.

Once you've got a valid bank account, you can transfer money using the high street bank's standard international transfer service. I think it takes about a week for the money to get there.

PS. If the money is going to the lawyers, they should be able to give you a IBAN number for transfering money.

Good luck.

OzBound

Thanks very much.

I currently bank with Barclays, not sure if they have one in Australia?

I just got a private message by somebody saying that there are foreign exchange companies that are different than banks but get you better rates and free transfers.

Are they safe? Has anybody used one and which ones?

Thanks again

kmmr

I have regularly used ozforex.com.au for transfers to and from Australia. They offer a quick and free service if it is more than $10k AUD.

But it won't help you on the exchange rate. They will give you a fair current rate, but the rate is the worst it has EVER been at the moment. Hold off if you can it might get better. It could get worse too I suppose - but I really hope not.... Transfer what you need in $10k chunks and cross your fingers that the pound improves over time.

I think Westpac offer an international service for new immigrants, although most of the big banks probably do.

PM with other banking/money issues if you want. I am from Sydney, but live over here now (like millions of others!)

spike1210

Hi, I have just used TorFx I found them through sendmoneyhome.org and the service and rate was excellent, I would reccomend you give them a call before using someone else...... I compared them against many others and they are very clear on what rate and amount I got also money arrived when they said it would also there was no fee's.

I would give them 5 stars if I could.....

Please see my thread Money Transfer to Canada to see how I managed my money transfer

Hope this helps

evilwitch

Hi,

we made the move over to Australia in June, we've left the majority of our money in the UK as the exchange rate, to us, isn't worth it for us to transfer. We are renting a place so didn't need a substantial sum for a house purchase. We did shift a bit over with us as we had a month or so before H started work and even longer before payday

We used https://www.hifx.co.uk and had no problems with the transfer. We opened our bank account with Westpac before we moved so all we had to do was show id and we were up and running. We arrived in Sydney in the morning and had it all sorted by just after lunch!

We're having a great time over here, today its 34degrees and beautiful sunshine in Sydney. Supposed to be up to 41 tomorrow and Saturday. The beers are cold and the barbie will be going later. Life is good here for us, H gets on really well with the people he works with and people I see when out and about with the children are friendly. I hope it works out as well for you as it has for us. Just don't forget to pack plenty of adaptor plugs and chocolate as its so time consuming (and illegal in some states I believe) to be changing plugs on every little appliance and the chocolate here is not that great. Especially the curly wurlys as I found yesterday.:(