Transferring Euros to UK bank account, Bank Charges??

Marchitiello

wmb194 said:

virgo17 said:

Rtype said:

If they do, can somebody suggest the cheapest way to transfer please?

Thanks in advance

We sold our Spanish property in 2017 and transferred all the proceeds back to the UK.

Following a personal recommendation from a friend who had gone down the same route a year earlier we used a company called Excel Currencies:

https://www.excelcurrencies.com/

We found them easy to deal with and our allocated personal advisor extremely helpful. The cost of the whole operation was many thousands of pounds less than trying to use a UK bank to do the transfer. They also were also (optionally) able to hold the currency in euros until a suitable exchange rate was reached before transferring to our UK bank.

Worth taking a look.

HTH.

In fx transfer terms 2017 was an age ago. 

If you want it to be converted immediately I'd open an HSBC Global Money* account and have the euros transferred to that. The conversion rates with this account are amongst the best - I know, surprising! No need to involve third party brokers you've never heard of.

*Recently introduced.

I agree that with the multicurrency accounts now on offer, those currency services (which falls outside of the deposit protection scheme running in both the EU and UK as well) are not the best option.

however, it is important to note that you cannot currently send Euro directly into your HSBC GMA Euro pot from an external source and thus you need to also open and HSBC Euro Currency account, just to receive the Euro balance, but then must transfer it to the GMA Euro pot before converting it to GBP (GMA conversion rates are much better than what you get on the Currency account).

wmb194

virgo17 said:

wmb194 said:

In fx transfer terms 2017 was an age ago. I'd open an HSBC Global Money* account and have the euros transferred to that. The conversion rates with this account are amongst the best - I know, surprising! No need to involve third party brokers you've never heard of.

*Recently introduced.

Recently introduced ?  Maybe better to see how satisfied clients are in a year or two ?

The OP requested suggestions and that is what was given. The company mentioned is still trading and still being used by friends of mine still in Spain to send funds either way.

Better to let the OP check a number of options to see what suits him the best, rather than immediately diss a suggestion offered in good faith.

I've been using it and it's been fine so far. I'd also rather take my chances with HSBC than some random currency broker.

Re what the OP asked, yes, and between us we're achieving that goal, aren't we?

CliveOfIndia

In terms of the mechanics of moving the money there have been plenty of good suggestions made already.  It's always worth working out the total cost though, especially on a large sum - for instance, it may be better to pay a larger fee in return for getting a more favourable exchange rate.

But make sure you've got documented evidence of the source of the money.  A large deposit into your UK account, especially if it's come from abroad, may possibly trigger the bank's anti-money-laundering checks.  I'm not saying it definitely will, but just be prepared to be asked for proof of the source of the money.

Rtype

Many Thanks for all the suggestions, it was really helpfull.

I looked into the HSBC account but after speaking to Natiownide, it turns out that they use HSBC for all international transfers, they don't charge a fee, and also have one of the best exchange rates.

Now to an issue that's happened during this process.

After getting all this information, I instructed my solicitor (in spain) to transfer the Euros as Euros as Nationwide would change them for me.

The solicitor has not done this but instead converted them into punds using their own preferred company (without my permission), this has subsequently lost me around £6000 and i'm livid.

I have been going backwards and forward with the solicitors and not only are they fobbing me off, they are trying to make out that they have done me a favour because if they had allowed the bank to do this, the exchange rate would have been even worse.

I now feel ripped off and trapped as I don't know what to do next, it's litterally like their attitude is 'well he lives in the UK, we're in Spain, what's he going to do'.

Does anybody have any suggestions?

I will detail this in a new post so that others can see it to.

Many thanks in advance

grumbler

Rtype said:

....after speaking to Natiownide, it turns out that they ... have one of the best exchange rates.

And how do you know this? Because they told you?

After getting all this information, I instructed my solicitor (in spain) to transfer the Euros as Euros as Nationwide would change them for me.

The solicitor has not done this but instead converted them into punds using their own preferred company (without my permission), this has subsequently lost me around £6000 and i'm livid.

If it's about 3% you didn't lose much compared to Nationwide.

TheBanker

Have you asked Nationwide what rate they would have applied if the money had been sent in EUR?

You say Nationwide have 'one of the best exchange rates'. Have you actually confirmed this? They are sometimes recommended for overseas card payments because some of their cards use the Visa rate with no additional fees, but I'm not aware of them having the best (or worse) exchange rates for incoming international payments.

If you haven't done so already, you need to ask Nationwide to confirm what rate would have been used if your payment had arrived in EUR. 

Rtype

grumbler said:

Rtype said:

....after speaking to Natiownide, it turns out that they ... have one of the best exchange rates.

And how do you know this? Because they told you?

After getting all this information, I instructed my solicitor (in spain) to transfer the Euros as Euros as Nationwide would change them for me.

The solicitor has not done this but instead converted them into punds using their own preferred company (without my permission), this has subsequently lost me around £6000 and i'm livid.

If it's about 3% you didn't lose much compared to Nationwide.

Yes they did, they told me what the rate would have been and that there would also have been no charges, I have this in writing.

The difference, due to the exchange rate, works out to around £6000, which I most certainly wouldn't class as not losing much.

Rtype

TheBanker said:

Have you asked Nationwide what rate they would have applied if the money had been sent in EUR?

You say Nationwide have 'one of the best exchange rates'. Have you actually confirmed this? They are sometimes recommended for overseas card payments because some of their cards use the Visa rate with no additional fees, but I'm not aware of them having the best (or worse) exchange rates for incoming international payments.

If you haven't done so already, you need to ask Nationwide to confirm what rate would have been used if your payment had arrived in EUR. 

I have, and they have put this in writing for me.

Marchitiello

Rtype said:

TheBanker said:

Have you asked Nationwide what rate they would have applied if the money had been sent in EUR?

You say Nationwide have 'one of the best exchange rates'. Have you actually confirmed this? They are sometimes recommended for overseas card payments because some of their cards use the Visa rate with no additional fees, but I'm not aware of them having the best (or worse) exchange rates for incoming international payments.

If you haven't done so already, you need to ask Nationwide to confirm what rate would have been used if your payment had arrived in EUR. 

I have, and they have put this in writing for me.

If they had indeed quoted you in writing it would have been for a a specific rate and for a very short time frame to execute. I have used many time traditional banks for currency exchange in the past and they will quote you a currency at time of enquire and you have only minutes to confirm or they will need to quote you again. The fact that Nationwide use HSBC is actually not a guarantee that the rate will be great, as you will be actually be paying both HSBC and Nationwide margins.With that in mind, you would need to compare the exchange rate used by the solicitor bank on the day they made the transaction at least to the average rate for that day quoted on xe.com or similar source.

TheBanker

Out of interest, are you prepared to tell us what rate was actually used, the date of the transaction, and any fees that were deducted from your payment by the solicitor's intermediary?

As the poster above says, references to HSBC are a bit of a red herring. The bank I used to work for used Natwest to send/receive international payments, but we managed our own FX positions. Generally, we didn't need to convert funds on a regular basis as the incoming and outgoing currency payments (at a bank level) were roughly equal. Even when we did need Natwest to convert funds to us (which might happen because we received an unusually large payment instruction and didn't have enough EUR to cover it in our Natwest account), this would be done using a negotiated spot rate. Essentially the rates Natwest were offering to their retail customers were completely irrelevant to us and our customers. 

Nationwide's website: https://www.nationwide.co.uk/help/payments/foreign-exchange-rates/ says 'The exchange rates shown here are only for funds being transferred out of your Nationwide account. For foreign currency payments made into your account we will convert it into sterling when we receive it, using our latest standard inbound exchange rate.' 

This implies that the rates for inbound payments change during the day (otherwise surely they would publish them, as they do for outbound?) - this being the case I am not sure how they could quote a specific rate for a transaction that didn't happen, given the need to know both the date and time it would have arrived with Nationwide.