Advice please: looking for a better bank account to transfer in EURO's

dgtazzman

Hi all,

looking for a bit of advice today. My situation is such that I live in the UK, but I work for a Dutch company and get paid in EURO's into a Dutch bank account. I transfer money between my Dutch and UK accounts as needed, usually only takes about a day to complete, I don't incur charges on the Dutch side as I transfer it out in EURO's, but my UK bank exchanges the EURO's into pounds and I believe that's where I'm getting shafted at the moment.

I bank with Lloyds and am generally happy with them and of course I expect charges for the currency exchange, but I think their rates aren't doing me any favours and there must be a bank that will do it cheaper, potentially saving me a few hundred pounds a year.

After a bit of calculating, I have concluded Lloyds is charging me the daily exchange rate + 2% over the transferred amount, meaning about 25 pounds charges for each transfer (I tend to transfer about 1500 EURO's at a time). If I just take the cash out with my Dutch debit card from a cash machine, they only charge me the daily exchange rate + 1%, but as I travel a lot, a can't get the money into my UK account like this all the time and mostly have to rely on bank to bank tranfers. Also there is a 400 pounds a day limit on the debit card for foreign cash withdrawls, making it inconvenient.

Are there any UK banks that charge a more favourable rate than Lloyds? I have been looking through all the different banks, but they don't seem to advertise this sort of information openly. First Direct did have some information on their site that suggested they charge the daily exchange rate + an 8 pound flat rate fee, which would already save me quite a bit, but even this was worded a bit vaguely.

Any advice is very welcomed.

olly300

Citibank allows you to have an account in Euros and pounds with corresponding debit cards- I don't know what they charge for moving Euros into another Euro account and I think they have only a branch at Canary Wharf in London
Carter Allan (private) bank also allows you to have an account in Euros and pounds with corresponding debit cards - I don't know what they charge for moving Euros into another Euro account.
Metrobank (metrobankonline) allows fee free transactions in Euros with their debit card - only problem is you have to go physically into a branch to set the account up.
Norwich and Peterborough Building society - allows free fee transactions in Euros with their debit card as well.

To be honest UK banks use the exchanging of pounds to Euros as a way to make money as it's not a normal day-to-day transaction for people.

Personally I would set up a UK account that allows free fee withdrawals in Euros, get a credit card that allows this as well (Post Office, Nationwide) but never use that for cash withdrawals, and then transfer a lump sum across monthly to pay bills.

All UK debit cards will have a daily cash withdrawal limit as it's for security reasons so you need to get yourself a credit card as well for large transactions.

The only other option for you is to use an Forex service if you need to transfer a sum monthly to pay bills in the Netherlands.

dgtazzman

Well, I don't really have bills to pay in The Netherlands as such, keeping that bank account is mostly for tax reasons as I get an annual tax rebate there and as far as I can see I can only have that paid into a Dutch account. It's also easier for my employer and probably also gives them certain tax perks compared to paying the wages straight into a foreign account. Only thing that still gets paid out of there is my Union contribution, which I keep for legal cover and as that same union has a UK branch, that could probably easily be changed.

Digging into the bank charges a bit further I have had to conclude Lloyds isn't actually charging a 'fee' as such, they are just adding the 2% to the wholesale exchange rate as the amounts are relatively small. This seems to be standard practice and varies from 1% to 4% depending on the bank, so I guess Lloyds isn't too bad with 2%. Did think about getting a Halifax rewards account, transferring the money into there (also part of the Lloyds group, so probably the same 2%), claiming the 5 pounds a month to offset against the charges and then passing it on to my Lloyds accounts.