usd to uk bank

UKresident1234

hi

expecting 6 figure usd sum from usa to be sent to me this week thinking about the dollar / gbp fluctuations 

not experienced with leveraging currencies 

options 

1. send all $ to my uk bank which will be turned into GBP at the conversion rate they set on the day - all money is therefore in gbp and if gbp falls i lose

2 send all the $ to a wise account (but is it trustworthy?) leave half in there for future trips to usa, get some interest and beneficial if usd rises over time - rest send to my uk bank which will be turned into gbp

3. ? maybe you have an idea (has to happen this week)

any thoughts welcome

thanks

mebu60

Use Wise for any currency conversion not your UK bank. 

WastedWords

If you want to hold in USD, cheapest would be to have paid into an HSBC USD Currency Account (free to receive USD) move to HSBC Global Money Account (free to send USD) to Trading 212 Invest which currently pays 4.1% on USD. Money is held in bank accounts and moneymarket funds.

Note: After HSBC new T&C are effective in April you would be able to omit one of the HSBC accounts as they are dropping charges for send USD from the Currency Accounts and will accept foreign currency into the GMA accounts w/o conversion to GBP.

If you want to convert all, check with some of the currency brokers, Currencies Direct, Spartan FX, etc. and compare with Trading 212.

Wise are popular here and competitive but not the cheapest. They are however much cheaper than any of the high street banks by far.
You could convert within the HSBC GMA account which will beat the banks but Trading 212 and Wise rates will be better.

cwep2

Depending on your UK bank, unless they offer accounts which can directly receive USD (eg HSBC currency account) then the FX rate used to transfer to GBP will probably be 1-3% away from mid market. 

Receive USD directly into Wise or Revolut and you can then convert at approx 0.4% away from mid market or 0.15% away from mid market respectively. You will need a premium/Metal account for Revolut to do this size FX transfer which charges a monthly fee, but you only need it for the months you do large FX transactions. They both offer the ability to hold USD and receive interest as well. T212 also have USD accounts which pay better interest and their conversion fee is 0.15% away from mid market, but I’m not sure if they allow you to receive payments from other people (you could check). IBKR is another provider you could use, similar to T212, but again not sure you can receive USD from someone else. 

Worth noting that some of these places will be covered by FSCS up to £85k equivalent (including Revolut if stored in a ‘Vault’ = savings earning interest) and some of these will not. 

Things to watch out for in the FX rate: UK inflation data on Wednesday morning which will move the FX rate a bit and the USD is moving quite a bit on Trump tariff announcements and anything else he says related to trade or monetary policy, but the central banks both had their meetings over the last two weeks so we may be in a quieter period for a couple of weeks (Trump announcements withstanding). 

Most people will advise you to invest the money, and to some extent if you invest in a global tracker fund you are mostly investing outside UK so in a way are exposed more to USD than GBP anyway, if you want to keep money out of GBP then this achieves that aim, and probably better than leaving in cash. 

PRAISETHESUN

You'll lose a fairly big margin on the exchange rate if you let your high street UK bank handle the currency conversion. Better to use a specialist currency conversion service, such as Wise. You provide the sender with account details for your Wise US account, let Wise convert USD to GBP, then transfer the GBP to your current account.

Timing the market for exchange rates is never really a recipe for success so personally I wouldn't bother about trying to maximise the exchange rate, but instead trying to minimise the fees. If you are going to spend US at some point it might make sense to keep it in USD, but personally I'd just convert to GBP and call it a day.

WastedWords

cwep2 said:

T212 also have USD accounts which pay better interest and their conversion fee is 0.15% away from mid market, but I’m not sure if they allow you to receive payments from other people (you could check).

T212 only allow transfers in from an account in your own name.

poseidon1

Your deadline for action is this week.

I agree with those who point you in the direction of a Wise account to retain your dollars in dollars pending a decision of what to do next. If you don't already have a Wise account you should be able to do so fairly rapidly on line.

I am not convinced you could do so quickly with a mainstream bank such as HSBC. Indeed if you don't already bank with HSBC you have to go through the faff and bother of opening an ordinary current account before you could access their currency accounts.  Not ideal given your short deadline.

I have  used Wise for years, and know a number of others who do so, with no complaints. Particularly useful for overseas spending with their multi currency debit card.

As regards earning interest,  and as mentioned by others a trading 212 account might work for you  see below blog from Wise on Trading 212's offering.

https://wise.com/gb/blog/trading-212-multicurrency-account.

Good luck with whatever decision you make.

Sam_666

1. no, too expensive

2. no, not a bank

3. no, not enough time

fiestami

Hi all money ambassadors,

I'm in a similar position looking to transfer 3 x six figures between USA bank account to UK bank account.

Great advice above.  I have a little more time to make these transfers over a few weeks/months - flexible as from my own US based account.

Any other thoughts to minimise transactions fees, exchange fees and to lock in the best available rates - seems £ is low against the $ right now compared to 5 year history?

Sam_666 - seems you have another idea which could be useful as time is not a huge factor for me?