Citibank US Dollar Account - Exchange Rate (Good??)

darren72

Does anyone have a US Dollar account with Citibank ?

If so, please can you confirm the exchange rate they are currently offering to convert between US Dollars and GBP in their accounts.

I'm looking into opening a US Dollar account as First Direct charge me £8 per time to receive a US Dollar payment, and convert at an extremely poor exchange rate.

Thanks in advance

Hazzanet

darren72 wrote: »

If so, please can you confirm the exchange rate they are currently offering to convert between US Dollars and GBP in their accounts.

IIRC it changes hourly.

darren72

Yes, I believe it does change constantly.

An idea on what is being offered at the moment would be appreciated - so that I have a comparison against other banks.

Thanks

thesaver79

darren72 wrote: »

Yes, I believe it does change constantly.

An idea on what is being offered at the moment would be appreciated - so that I have a comparison against other banks.

Thanks

Give them a call on the number at the bottom of this page.

bowlhead99

I have USD and GBP accounts with them, unfortunately I'm waiting for a new online logon at the mo so can't check. But while the rate is a moving target, for obvious reasons, the spread (difference between buy and sell) is fixed.

I can't remember if the difference between the mid-rate and the rate to buy and sell is 1.5% or 2%. I don't think it was any less than 1.5 (I shop around if I have a large amount to transfer) but I don't think it's any more than 2 either (it's much better than cash at a travel agent).

So if you take the official interbank mid rate at any point in time, and let's pretend this rate was £1 to $1; and the spread I'm referring to is 2% - you would only get £0.98 pounds for your $1 dollar, but if you wanted to buy $1 dollar you'd have to pay £1.02 (bank always wins). You could scale that effect up for any exchange rate you like (as of this moment, IG index has today's dollar at 1.51224).

If you are talking about depositing $50 [STRIKE]checks[/STRIKE] cheques, then your £8 FD fee is clearly dwarfing any exchange rate improvement, but if you're receiving transfers of $5000 a time then the actual rate is probably more important.

I suppose the only way to know exactly how poor the FD rate is, in percentage off the real mid-rate, is to find out what exact date and time they fix your rate on an incoming deposit, and be looking at a live prices currency website at that exact moment to see what the mid-price was compared to what you got. The market can move a percent or more during the course of a given day so it's not always obvious if you got a bad price or a really bad price with your bank.

Citi are (one of?) the only UK bank to let you have multiple currency accounts linked to a single debit card with instant online transfers between accounts. They still take an age to clear foreign cheques into your UK dollar account though, and be aware you might be suffering monthly fees for running the accounts.

thesaver79

I have a Euro account with Lloyds Offshore. I'm not sure if their currency exchange rates are better or worse than Citybank, but when I looked the interest rates on their savings account definitely were better, at least for the first year.

Who has experience with both?

bowlhead99

Yes, I have a USD account with LloydsTSB Offshore too - a "Premier International" account.

Their free cash transfer service is OK, and the product would probably be good for some expats, but if you don't keep $3500 in there (or £2500 in a GBP account with them) they charge a $30pm fee, and if you're a UK or US or Canadian resident, that fee doesn't actually get you the bundled free worldwide travel insurance. Also they have different logins for their sterling and currency online banking which might be a pain. I only have the dollar one.

As I don't have a GBP account under the Premier International banner, I can't say what the fx rates are like to move between international GBP and international USD. I did just buy a small amount of dollars for the LTSB international USD account by transfer from my UK GBP account, and the rate I got was 2.7% worse than the mid-market rate at that time. So, that's worse than Citi would have done, but it wasn't a completely internal transfer from LTSB international to LTSB international, and maybe they can do better.

Also if you're over in the US from time to time it can be quite handy to have a Citibank visa card and withdraw cash from ATMs without charges, which you wouldn't be able to do if you had a Lloyds USD visa.

Point taken about savings interest rates, but in order to get the introductory 0.95% rate (which is only a short term bonus) you would need more than $5000 in the savings account, plus $3500 in the current account to avoid the high monthly fee there, so you need a fair amount of dollars to lock away if you want to access that rate. While savings interest is nice to have, i you're a UK resident earning and spending pounds with no looming USD outgoings ahead of you, the FX risk on having large amounts of USD sitting around is probably more of an issue than whether the interest rate is 1% or 0.1%.

Generally I think the Citi product is better than the Lloyds Offshore one for an occasional depositor who travels to the US from time to time, YMMV. I'm based in London so can easily drop in to deposit cheques or get travellers cheques or cash out of the account etc before a holiday.

BeachNut

Citibank USD to GBP rates depend on the amount your're exchanging and change every 30minutes. Better rates are available elsewhere. However, the interest rate they pay on USD ain't too bad for instant access and can be fee free (but again, better rates elsewhere).

Porcupine

OK, here we go...

Yahoo Finance says GBPUSD=X is 1.5231
xe.com says 1 GBP = 1.52300 USD
It's a Saturday so the markets are closed.

For Citi USD to GBP:
For $1 the rate is UK£ 1 to US$ 1.559553
For $10 the rate is UK£ 1 to US$ 1.559553
For $100 the rate is UK£ 1 to US$ 1.559553
For $1000 the rate is UK£ 1 to US$ 1.559553
For $10000 the rate is UK£ 1 to US$ 1.559553
For $100000 the rate is UK£ 1 to US$ 1.535185
For $1000000 is above the maximum daily transfer threshold.

Lucky it allows me to price up these transfers having $0.00 in my account