Best UK bank with lowest international transaction fees?

GeorginaUKCZ

Hello,

I live in the UK and am looking to open a bank account. My family lives in Europe and for the time being, are the main source of income I have. Up until now, I have been using my European bank account which meant there were no additional fees charged for the money that was being sent to me. Seeing as I will be applying for jobs here in the UK soon, I thought it best to open a UK bank account. This would mean my family would be sending me money from Europe to this UK account.
I am trying to find out which UK bank has the lowest international transaction fee so that my family doesn't end up having to pay an unnecessarily large amount for the transfer.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, thank you! 

PRAISETHESUN

Don't try and let the banks do currency exchange for you - they will rip you off through excessive fees and/or poor exchange rates. Use a specialist currency broker to do the actual conversion.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/foreign-currency-exchange/

I recommend Wise (formerly TransferWise) for this but there are other options. Your family can either send you EUR to your Wise EUR account and you do the conversion to GBP at your leisure, or they can convert it into GBP themselves (using Wise or a similar service) and send it directly to your UK bank account.

eskbanker

GeorginaUKCZ said:

Seeing as I will be applying for jobs here in the UK soon, I thought it best to open a UK bank account. This would mean my family would be sending me money from Europe to this UK account.

Not really what you were asking about, but surely your expectation from employment should be that you'd earn enough to support yourself?  An ongoing stream of international transfers into a UK account that's already being funded from wages or salary might arouse suspicion....

Daliah

In your shoes, I would use Starling Bank. Tailormade for EUR and GBP, and much the same, sometimes better, transfer rates as Wise. I use both, preference on Starling.

[Deleted User]

Europe is a big place - what Country and Currency? 

eDicky

If you have not previously had a UK bank account and your credit file is thin, then Starling Bank is probably your best option for a start. They don't carry out a hard credit search (unless overdraft facility is requested) and they provide a euro account in addition to GBP, with minimal conversion fee.

But I'm guessing that you need to receive Czech koruna, not euros, in which case it would be useful for yourself or your family member (or both) to open a Wise account for transfer and conversion of funds conveniently and with low cost. As mentioned, avoid the mainstream UK banks for this even if they would give you an account at this stage.