Missing wire Bank transfer from USA to UK

Trabuco

It’s been over 3 months now since I requested a Wire Transfer of over $7000 from my US Bank to my Nationwide Bank Account here in the UK.
Nationwide use HSBC as an intermediary Bank.
Despite dozens of Emails, phone calls and meetings with Nationwide nothing has been resolved. The last information I have was back in September which said that the transfer is “No Longer Traceable”
I requested a “Trace and Recall” back in September but have still not received the funds. No one seems to know where the money is. 

It’s caused me so much stress and frustration. I find it so difficult to understand in this day and age with so much technology how this can happen.
I’m hoping for help. I’ve run out of solutions.

born_again

It would be US bank that would need to trace, given Nationwide never received anything.

tetrarch

The problem is the implicit, but unexcuted FX trade from $ to £. In my experience US banks are absosutely terrible in dealing with ANYTHING outside the US or in ANYTHING but US$.

born_again is almost certainly correct. Somewhere in the US  there will be a US$ suspense account with your $7,000 sitting in it, waiting to be claimed.

Nationwide are no help to you, your US bank need to recall the payment - this will not be a quick process.

Once you do have your money back, please use a FX broker such as Wise (others are available) to execute the FX trade and intermediate the payments - the good news is that you will probably get a better rate as a bonus

Regards

Tet 

 

Hoenir

Trabuco said:

Nationwide use HSBC as an intermediary Bank.

May well be the case in there's a chain in the USA depending on who your bankers are. Why haven't you taken this up with your US bankers and requested them to trace?  Nationwide will only be aware of funds received. If there suspense accounts are now cleared then there's nothing for them to report. 

HobgoblinBT

In your months of trying to find your money have you acquired a copy of the outgoing  SWIFT message?  This should be able to tell you how the money was to be sent and where it likely is.  A Google search of Swift code numbers and their meanings will tell you what each line means, unless you wish to share the data on here with your own name and account number redacted.   

I concur with other posters in that the originating bank is the one to trace as they have the data of where they sent the money.

Trabuco

Thank you all for suggestions but I’ve tried everything suggested. I did have a reply to the last Trace and Recall from my US bank to say at last they had received the funds back. I was elated but since then (this was back in December) I’ve had no communication from them. They did offer to send me a Dollar cheque but UK banks no longer accept Dollar cheques. The next step was to initiate another wire transfer but this time using Barclays as they are more international and deal with wire transfers regularly. I double checked all information with Barclays before sending all new details to US Bank. This was 20th of January 2025.
ive had no replies or communication. I really need help it’s over 8 months now since i began this wire transfer. It’s such a lot of money and it would make my life so much easier.
I don’t know how to contact Martin Lewis directly. I thought that he may have an answer.

eskbanker

Trabuco said:

I don’t know how to contact Martin Lewis directly. I thought that he may have an answer.

You could always try his social media channels rather than this forum (although suspect that there'll be better more specialist knowledge held by some on here), but I doubt he'll offer personalised financial guidance individually to the vast number of people who ask!

grumpy_codger

Trabuco said:

  The next step was to initiate another wire transfer but this time using Barclays as they are more international and deal with wire transfers regularly. 

Why was it not Wise like suggested above? I'm no expert, but I think with them you'd get a US account details to transfer the money to. With Barclays, again, it was an international transfer.
https://wise.com/gb/send-money/send-money-to-the-uk-from-the-usa

sausage_time

Wise would be a good choice - I have used them for dozens of transfers from US institutions to my Wise US$ account, then on to my UK bank account.

https://wise.com/help/articles/2827506/how-do-i-receive-money-with-my-usd-account-details

gt94sss2

Trabuco said:

They did offer to send me a Dollar cheque but UK banks no longer accept Dollar cheques. 

For future reference, HSBC UK accept USD cheques as do Lloyds/Halifax.

TheBanker

Given this has gone wrong twice now, are you sure you're actually giving the correct details to the US Bank?

I worked in International Payments years ago, and I'm afraid the majority of failed payments were caused by the customer providing insufficient or incorrect information, or for unknown reasons changing the details the receiving bank had asked them to use. There are certain checks the sending bank can do, but they can't confirm the details in the same way that Confirmation of Payee can for domestic UK payments.