Norwegian wages paid to UK account

hannaby

eDicky wrote: »

These solutions are not 'digital currencies'. You can learn how to use them to cut your cross currency costs effectively.

To what exchange rates are you comparing the rate you receive from Santander? You will not escape at least a 2%+ margin with transfers directly between mainstream banks, in fact if it's only 2% you're not doing too badly.

Open a NOK account in Norway and arrange your own transfers in order to cut your losses.

Don't bother talking to the likes of Santander staff about such things.

I'm using several different exchange rates to try and get an average.

For example, on the wage I have just received of 51960 NOK on 20th of this month what I got in my Santander account was £4294 which would equate to a NOK to GBP exchange ratio of 12.1

If I look at some examples for the same day:
Mastercard = 11.774
DNB = 11.852
CurrencyExchange.com = 11.806
Exchangerates.com = 11.803
XE = 11.810

With regards to opening a NOK bank in Norway I don't see how this would help me. My current transfer of my NOK only charges a very minimal fee of 30NOK. If I were to open a NOK acount myself I then still have to arrange a transfer and would pay this 30NOK also.
My problem seems to be on the UK side.
Please correct me if I am missing something here though as if I can somehow change the way this is done to cut losses I am open to suggestions.


From what I can gather any mainstream bank is either going to use an acceptable exchange rate but then charge a % fee, or use an exchange rate weighted in their favour.

The transferwise or revolut option looks like they could be my best option but I need to do some more homework on them.
My big concern is that neither are FSCS protected so I take a risk in using them.

To be honest if I could find a real world bank with FSCS protection that was only charging 0.5% fees against the mastercard rate then I would be happy but I think that may be wishful thinking.

cheekycactus

The only real solution is this:

1) Open a Norwegian Bank Account and get paid into it
2) Open an account with TransferWise
3) Use your Norwegian IBAN or Card to set up a transfer from your account to your UK account via TransferWise
4) Save a lot of money

TransferWise are fantastic and if you have any questions, I find their social media very responsive. I've used them to get paid for years.

eDicky

hannaby wrote: »

With regards to opening a NOK bank in Norway I don't see how this would help me. My current transfer of my NOK only charges a very minimal fee of 30NOK. If I were to open a NOK acount myself I then still have to arrange a transfer and would pay this 30NOK also.

No, when using a transfer service such as TransferWise there would be no fees or exchange rate margins by either the Norwegian or UK bank. You pay the NOK by domestic transfer and receive GBP to your UK bank by domestic transfer - no fees or conversion.

TransferWise takes a percentage fee (probably 0.35%) and converts at the perfect mid-market rate that you see on xe.com. Others may charge no fee but put a reasonable margin on the conversion rate. Revolut converts at the mid-market rate (weekdays) with no fee up to £5k/month, 0.5% thereafter (basic account).

Forget about MasterCard or Visa rates, they are not involved in transfers.

cheekycactus

Checked the amount you'd get on TransferWise, given the numbers you provided earlier:

NOK Salary: 51,960
TW Fee: 233.86 NOK

You Receive: £4,399.37

Ben8282

Problem is here that as you have no bank account in Norway, do you seriously expect your employer to bother with all this transferwise business? Your employer will want to make a straightforward payment to you of your earnings from their bank account to yours as they currently do. You are actually already quite lucky that your employer is agreeing to send your pay to a UK bank account. I can't imagine a UK company being very happy if an employee provided them with a bank account in Norway for them to send the pay to.

cheekycactus

Why will his employer need to know anything about TransferWise? They will simply pay him into a Norwegian Bank account and he will transfer it to the U.K. using TransferWise.

Ben8282

cheekycactus wrote: »

Why will his employer need to know anything about TransferWise? They will simply pay him into a Norwegian Bank account and he will transfer it to the U.K. using TransferWise.

Read the thread. OP does NOT HAVE a Norwegian bank account and does not wish to open one.

Eco_Miser

Ben8282 wrote: »

WAGES are paid weekly.
A SALARY is paid monthly.
There is NO SUCH THING as a MONTHLY WAGE.

Who made you the arbiter of the English language?


Wikipedia (for a convenient source ) says the distinction is that a salary is a fixed amount, whereas a wage is based on a piece rate or hourly rate, but in any case a wage may refer to all forms of monetary remuneration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage

cheekycactus

Then your response still doesn’t make sense.

Perhaps when he sees the savings he can make, he won’t be so reluctant to do so.

Don’t be so stuck in the 90s.

hannaby

Thanks for all the replies.
I've been away for the week and just seen them all.

Just for reference my employer doesn't really care where the money gets paid and they are being very helpful with any solutions I come up with.
They have suggested some banks I can open an account with in Norway but the problem is that a lot of these banks charge a monthly fee so I will need to physcially go to these banks and find out full info (which I would need to do to open an account anyway).

It still looks as though Transferwise is the best solution anyway and from what I can gather I wouldn't then need a Norwegian bank account in my name anyway.

My issue with Transferwise is still that there is no FSCS protection.
I suppose my risk would be limited as I would conduct the transfer from NOK to GBP and then on to my physical UK account as soon as my wages hit the Transferwise account.