Best way to service french bank account

Bogtrotter

Hello all

I have a property in France along with a french bank account which is only used to pay for utilites, tax d'habitation etc.

Up until now I have been transferring money from my Sterling UK account to my French Euro account at a poor exchange rate set by my bank with a £25 charge per transfer.

In the past I have transferred monies to cover expected bills but I have found that the timing of french bills is somewhat unpredictable and have needed to tranfer funds more often than I planned each one with a £25 surcharge.

As a result I am looking for more cash efficient ways to transfer cash to my french account.

I was looking at the likes of Moneybookers.com and foreign exchange sites like xetrade.com to transfer money to the french account.

Anyone have any experience/recommendations of efficient ways of transferring money? To be honest I could get away with transferring less than £100 at a time so I would still be open to the use of a non FSA guaranteed option considering I probably pay £100 per year in transfer fees presently.

TIA

NFH

Try Halo Financial. I've used them several times, and working in wholesale FX myself, I'm fussier than most about getting a good retail FX rate. They pass on Barclays' £15 charge in order to send EUR from their Barclays London account, but you may save more than this with a better FX rate depending on the amount involved.

benjus

I've used The FX Firm several times, which offered me more or less the same rate as Halo Financial (after considering all charges). However, these firms are more interested in medium to large transactions, and may not be cost-effective for sending £100.

The last time I had to send a small amount (a deposit on a holiday rental in Italy), I used Mukuru.com. It was quite easy to set up, and I was able to open an account and send money the same day (although I had to deposit cash in their Barclays account, as setting up a debit card takes a few days for security reasons).

As you have already suggested, moneybookers.com is probably well worth a look for smaller transfers.

Pelican_eats_pigeon

I would consider opening a Citibank Euro current account and using that to either make SEPA payments into your French account (should be free) or paying your bills directly from there.

Bogtrotter

Thanks for the replies.

Searching through a few of the transfer agencies which come up in a Google search the Moneybookers looks to be the best of the ones I managed to get a quote from.

Depositing money cost a maximum of £0.50... exchange rate is 2% less than Interbank rate and withdrawal fee of €1.80 to bank account. What this means is that if I deposited £100 today i would have €112.66 transferred to my french account.

The only unknown is if my french bank, Caisse d'Epargne, will make a charge for an incoming transfer from Moneybookers some websites suggest that french banks charge between zero - €30 for international transfers depending on the receiving and routing banks.

Anyone confirm french bank charges from specific banks for incoming Moneybookers transfers?

benjus

My French bank (Credit Agricole) charges me about €3.80 every time a transfer from the UK is paid in.

You should be able to find out from their website - or alternatively just ask them...

Pelican_eats_pigeon

benjus wrote: »

My French bank (Credit Agricole) charges me about €3.80 every time a transfer from the UK is paid in.

You should be able to find out from their website - or alternatively just ask them...

If you make a SEPA Euro payment they can't charge anything.

benjus

Pelican_eats_pigeon wrote: »

If you make a SEPA Euro payment they can't charge anything.

I just looked at their list of fees. It's listed as "Advice of credit (SEPA transfer received from abroad)". I'm guessing this means that they're charging me for sending me a letter (which I don't want) every time I make a transfer. Do you know if there's any way to avoid this?

MOLLYBRUSH

I just transfer one large amount into my French bank account annually which I estimate will cover the year's bills. With the current poor rate of interest it makes sense to have it sitting there and not incurring charges for transferring smaller amounts.