How to best move €50k to the UK?

aspley

I have sold assets in Ireland and want to move €50k back to the UK. I have seen services such as Keycurrency and Currency Fair but wondered if anyone knows of a better service to use. I can only transfer €25k a day so I will be doing it in 2 transactions.
 

colsten

https://www.monito.com/ is a good comparison site.

What all those currency transfer outfits have in common is that none of them has FSCS, or equivalent, protection. I would therefore only ever transfer small amounts with them - and some of them do have limits, especially for new customers, anyway.

If you are a UK resident, you could alternatively consider GBP and Euro accounts with Starling Bank. You get the full FSCS protection with them, their exchange rate is good and charges are low, conversion is instant and done by yourself, and I don't think you need to be overly concerned about transaction limits. Having said this, anything above ~£10k would wake the anti-money-laundering dogs, anyway.

steampowered

www.xe.com is very reputable and very competitive.

colsten

steampowered said:

www.xe.com is very reputable and very competitive.

I have never seen xe.com in the top rates, not even with the lure of a £20 cashback through TopCashback or Quidco. Their reputation may be good, and I am a happy user of their exchange rate app, but their rates are nothing special, and they - like the other currency transfer services - don't have FSCS cover.

Gary1984

I used to use TransferWise which was fine but the lack of FSCS protection did worry me. Now I transfer between My Starling GBP and EUR accounts which is incredibly easy, quick and safe. Rates about the same as TransferWise from what I can tell. 

aspley

I think I'll use Starling as it seems easy, safe and has a decent rate as well as very good reviews. Thanks for your responses. I hadn't even noticed Starling.

VXman

Interested in Starling. I need to move money from Hong Kong in HKD from my HSBC HK bank  to my UK bank. I generally use Transferwise which involves sending the HKD to Transferwise and they send it to My UK bank.
How will/can this work with Starling. Can I do the same?
Ah I don't think I can - am I reading this correct:
"We’re not currently able to receive USD payments or any other currency into your Starling account, but don’t worry – we’re working on it!"

colsten

VXman said:

Interested in Starling. I need to move money from Hong Kong in HKD from my HSBC HK bank  to my UK bank. I generally use Transferwise which involves sending the HKD to Transferwise and they send it to My UK bank.
How will/can this work with Starling. Can I do the same?
Ah I don't think I can - am I reading this correct:
"We’re not currently able to receive USD payments or any other currency into your Starling account, but don’t worry – we’re working on it!"

Starling is really only for GBP and Euro atm, for which it is superb.

I presume you already checked and discarded doing your transfers just with HSBC, and instead chose a currency transfer service. This might well be your best alternative for the time being but you could double check with a Hong Kong specific expat forum.

Another option to check out is Monzo. They do have a full UK banking licence and FSCS cover for their current account. They use Transferwise technology / infrastructure for their international transfers and the Monzo FSCS cover may extend to the transfers. If you check with them, please report back what you could find out.

shaun_from_Africa

Make sure that you either have or can get hold of on short notice, copies of any documents showing the source of the money you are transferring as there is a possibility that the receiving bank will want to see these.
I recently transferred in £22k from offshore and had to provide documented evidence of how I obtained this money before the UK bank would allow me access to the money.

You may not be asked but it wouldn't do any harm to be prepared just in case.