Transfer from abroad

pawkldn

Hi all. We are about to receive some money as a gifted part of the deposit from my partner's parents. The money will be coming from a spanish account (€) to England. Would anyone know if there will be any difference if they send it directly to £ account or if we open a € account in the UK to receive the money and then convert it to £ locally? It will be quite sizeable sum so we worry about exchange rate or any additional fees that may produce that could make us lose some money. We would be grateful for any help!

eDicky

There will be no difference between sending the funds to a GBP bank account or sending them to a EUR account first then converting them, the banks involved will stiff you on the exchange rate, unless the conversion is done another way.

An exception is Starling Bank, which offers personal GBP and EUR accounts with a transparent 0.4% margin on the interbank rate between them. It's quick and easy to open these accounts on their phone app. Note that EUR deposits exceeding 50k now incur a negative interest with Starling.

Other possibilities are TransferWise Borderless and Fineco Bank UK, to which the euros can be sent and converted. Neither provide the UK FSCS protection, Fineco has the Italian equivalent.

Naturally, you will need the source of funds evidence ready to provide when recieving a large sum, perhaps presenting it in advance would be useful.

pawkldn

eDicky said:

There will be no difference between sending the funds to a GBP bank account or sending them to a EUR account first then converting them, the banks involved will stiff you on the exchange rate, unless the conversion is done another way.

An exception is Starling Bank, which offers personal GBP and EUR accounts with a transparent 0.4% margin on the interbank rate between them. It's quick and easy to open these accounts on their phone app. Note that EUR deposits exceeding 50k now incur a negative interest with Starling.

Other possibilities are TransferWise Borderless and Fineco Bank UK, to which the euros can be sent and converted. Neither provide the UK FSCS protection, Fineco has the Italian equivalent.

Naturally, you will need the source of funds evidence ready to provide when recieving a large sum, perhaps presenting it in advance would be useful.

Thanks for your help that's really useful!!

jonesMUFCforever

Unless you have given your bank instructions NOT to convert the funds - they will do so automatically.

Alex9384

Yeah, better to talk to your bank and tell them you're about to receive a big sum. I've read posts of people here having their bank accounts frozen even for receiving benefits, lol.

I have a good experience with TransferWise and Revolut, both of which offer a Euro account with its own bank details and GBP account as well, so you can send it from the Eur account to your GBP account within the same app, but I've never tried to convert any substantial sum.

J_B

eDicky said:

Other possibilities are TransferWise Borderless and Fineco Bank UK, to which the euros can be sent and converted. Neither provide the UK FSCS protection, Fineco has the Italian equivalent.

We use https://www.currencyfair.com/ which is another possibility and in my experience has always been considerably cheaper than the banks.

colsten

Neither Transferwise nor Revolut nor CurrencyFair nor any other money transfer service has any deposit protection. If you want to recommend them, you should mention that.

There are banks who offer Euro accounts which come with the full FSCS or FSCS equivalent protection. See above.

Alex9384

colsten said:

Neither Transferwise nor Revolut nor CurrencyFair nor any other money transfer service has any deposit protection.

I think it's not really that bad with TransferWise:
https://transferwise.com/help/articles/2949821/is-my-money-covered-by-a-financial-protection-scheme

You're not going to hold your money in there. Only use it for the conversion. It's a matter of a couple of days I guess.

colsten

Alex9384 said:

colsten said:

Neither Transferwise nor Revolut nor CurrencyFair nor any other money transfer service has any deposit protection.

I think it's not really that bad with TransferWise:
https://transferwise.com/help/articles/2949821/is-my-money-covered-by-a-financial-protection-scheme

You're not going to hold your money in there. Only use it for the conversion. It's a matter of a couple of days I guess.

None of the schemes used by currency transfer services is as good and as safe as FSCS. I appreciate that people might make a conscious decision that the risk associated with using a currency transfer firm is acceptable but this isn't a reason for not pointing out to them that there is no FSCS protection. I have used Transferwise and other currency transfer services in the past myself, and I might do so again if I have the need for a currency transfer that I cannot get done with a bank such as Starling Bank or Fineco. For Euro<--GBP transfers, using Starling is a no-brainer for me. Fineco is a fiddly bank, with an Italian deposit protection scheme, so not my primary choice but they have their place for non-Euro transactions (which is not what the OP needs).

I also agree that a currency transfer transaction is in most cases completed in a couple of working days. However, new accounts will be subject to verification which can drag on for a while, especially when larger amounts are involved. Larger amounts can also take more than a couple of working days even for fully verified accounts. A lot can happen whilst your money is in transit.