swinbc

Can anyone offer any advice on the best ways to move a large sum of money, proceeds of a house sale, from a Spanish Bank account (in Euros) to a Sterling account in the UK and minimize or avoid the high Spanish bank transfer charges? Is it possible to negotiate these charges in advance or are they rigidly fixed?
My intention is to send the money to my UK Bank via a currency exchange company to get the better ex rate, Could I arrange this as a payment to the Currency company or is this still charged and considered the same as a transfer?
Anyone had experience of this when moving back to the UK?

Rosemary

This was discussed fairly recently so hopefully you will find this thread useful.

http://britishexpats.com/forum/spain...apital-888337/

Rosemary

swinbc

Hi Rosemary,
the question is different, this post relates to the Bank charges just to make the transfer arrangements, the previous one was related to getting the best ex rate
thanks

lic

Hi,
Go to moneysavingexpert.com to research your question. He has a few transfer company names on that site, which he states he does not get paid to recommend.
I use Transferwise.com for mine. Money usually in the count that date. Also you see what they charge.
It is not the charges you should worry about. It's the amount that hits your uk account that matters.
My bank Sabedell don't charge for online transfers below 50000€ to another Spanish bank account. You can also set up a transfer with your Spanish bank debit card (which should be free).

lic

Also on these transfer sites you get the spot rate which changes various times an hour. You set up the trade and the site tells you exactly how much you get if your happy you agree the transfer and credit your account with that company with the money within a specified period. If you don't like the rate you simply don't push the confirm button, and it costs you nothing.
If you have 12 hours to credit the account with the amount you want to send, and the rate changes in your favour you simply cancel the transfer contract, and create another one for the better rate free of charge.

swinbc

Hi Lic thanks for your reply.
However the currency exchange is not a problem as I use a good Currency Exchange company. The charges/fees I am referring to are the bank charges for just pressing the button to make the payment/transfer to the currency exchange company. I too am with Sabadell but the figure I am being quoted for a very large sum is 0.5% of the total amount, money for no effort just a finger on a button scandalous!

lic

Hi,
Send it in amounts under 50,000€ and there should be no fee. I assume you have a sabadell key bank account. If you don't then switch to it and the transfers should be free.

Eric S

So the issues is charges for making the transfer in euros from your bank account to the currency exchange company's (euro) account?

The problem may actually be with the currency transfer company. If their euro account is in another country, that may be the reason for the fee to do the transfer. Check with your bank and see if you get free transfers to other banks in Spain. If so, look for a currency exchange company that has an account in Spain. If I remember correctly, Currencies Direct has an account in Spain that you can transfer into.

Alternately, look for a currency transfer company that allows other methods of getting the euros to them. For example, TransferWise allows you to send money to them via Trustly, credit/debit card, SOFORT, and iDEAL. Some or all these may be no fee.

Good luck.
- Eric S.

BigD Nerja

Hi this was a couple of years ago but I was with Sabadell and had a 6 figure Euro sum to transfer and convert to Sterling.
We used Caxton as they had an agreement with Sabadell so we incurred a minimal charge sending the money to Caxton's Euro account. Another option we used was having the proceeds of our sale paid into the Caxton account by direct transfer from our purchaser thus avoiding any fees. The total was then held by Caxton and I spoke daily with my nominated dealer and sold € bought £ when I was ready.
I would suggest speaking to your FX trader and see if they have a similar arrangement.

swinbc

Thats a very good idea,thanks I will investgate

rspltd

I can confirm that we transferred money via Currencies direct.We opened a bank account at no cost with their nominated bank, paid the cheque in and currencies direct transferred it into my UK bank. No cost and easy peasy. Account with with Spanish bank was then closed.

swinbc

I tried to get a Caxton account last year but was declined because I am not UK resident. Were you Spanish or Uk resident at the time?

swinbc

Where you UK or Spanish resident at the time? I have found that trying to open a new UK Bank account seems impossible if you do not have a UK address which you can prove.

Neptuno

We did the same
We kept our bank account in UK when we moved to Spain, so no problem about trying to open one
I imagine the OP also has a bank account in the UK?

rspltd

That's what the original posting said.