Multi-currency bank and trading account

fULvI3ttO

Hi all, I am Italian and I live and work in London. I am 29, single, 10k£ and 25k€ savings (on an Italian bank account) + 1k£ saving capacity each month.

I would like to invest my savings mostly in corporate/government bonds and since I have savings in two different currencies I was looking for a multi-currency (€/£) bank account that would allow me also to invest my € savings on € bonds and the £ ones on £ bonds.

What I want to avoid is to pay a conversion commission to transfer my euros on a £ account, pay it once again to invest in € bonds and then pay it once again when the investment is repaid to get £.

Any ideas on bank/trading account that would allow me to use multiple currencies?

Thank you.

bowlhead99

There are a few banks that will offer multiple currencies (e.g. I have GBP and EUR and USD current accounts with Citibank) but the investment divisions of banks are not well known for being affordable or accessible. Banking and investing are two different types of products and most people don't use the investment services of their own bank, which are usually very limited and restricted in what you can invest in. So while I find it useful to be able to hold dollars and pounds at Citi and have a single debit card that can be linked to both accounts, you can't invest directly out of the accounts into bonds.

If you're investing / trading in multiple international markets from London, take a look at http://uk.saxomarkets.com/ , they're quite well regarded and handle stocks and bonds and cfds.

http://www.tddirectinvesting.co.uk/ are another broker that offers investing across multiple international markets , at least for shares - but I've never tried to buy a foreign bond with them, as I just use investment funds on their funds platform for my bonds exposure for that. There is not a lot of demand from UK retail investors to invest directly into individual bonds of foreign companies or governments, so I'm not sure if it's something they would offer.

TD handle multicurrency cash OK, so if I have USD or EUR proceeds resulting from selling something, I can just use it to buy more shares in those same currencies without needing to go back and forth to GBP - which would be quite expensive due to their high fx charge (1.5% loading). However, I've never tried to transfer foreign currency from my own banks into their account, because all the money from my salary that I want to invest, starts off in sterling.

gt94sss2

fULvI3ttO wrote: »

Any ideas on bank/trading account that would allow me to use multiple currencies?

I haven't used them personally but have a look at Interactive Brokers - they offer trading in lots of markets and I understand charge very little for f/x transactions.

HSBC InvestDirect Plus also offers you the chance to buy shares in Europe/US using local currency accounts so you don't have to covert back to GBP but again I haven't use them for this purpose.

Regards
Sunil

Porcupine

HSBC InvestDirect Plus looks pretty expensive for trading - EUR29.95 or USD49.95 per deal.

Saxo is interesting - they charge commissions rather than fixed deal fees - for instance 0.1% or EUR12 whichever is greatest. At least that's the fees for ETFs - I can't see the fees for shares listed. There's also a 0.12%pa custody fee (minimum EUR5pm).