loulou74

Has anyone had any dealings with the numerous companies offering currency exchange, or should we just use the Commonwealth bank?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated as have no idea of the best option.

Jamesy

If you use the link to Go Matilda (Alan Colletts website) there is some advice on currency exchange, it's possible to place a forward contract where you ask for A$s to be purchased at a desired price (and available for a given date) as the money markets move constantly.

Nicki

dillon

I used Exchange Direct. They sponsor the money market page on Teletext. (Channel 4 page 519) and were very good. Much cheaper than a bank, and excellent service. Watch the markets on text over a few weeks/months and then call them. They can't offer advice (by law) on when to buy but if you ask the right questions they can be very revealing! If you get a rate over A$2.90 your winning. They only deal with stuff over £10,000 though.
You can forward buy and all the other stuff usually reserved for dealers. Once you have set up an account you can buy over the telephone and then send them the funds. Once bought they will hold it in an account and then transfer it anywhere you want. Once I had bought I opened an account with Nat West and parked it their earning interest until I had sorted things out with the Commonwealth.
I'm not impressed with Commonwealth. It's like banking was in the UK 20 years ago with regard their attitude (in London anyway) Like "your really lucky we have let you be our customer". Perhaps they were having a bad day but it still took them over a week to move funds from London to Sydney - I think someone walked with it.
Mind you.......I still cringe having to pay bank fees on a private account over here. Come back Nat West...all is forgiven!

cruisey

Let me see if I've understood. If I open an Oz account (with Commonwealth, ANZ etc.) I could buy Australian Dollars with Exchange Direct and they would transfer them to my Oz account several months later on a date I specify??

Don

Correct. The money converter (check out also Moneycorp and Halewood who offer similar services) will exchange GBP for AUD on the day you specify and hold your AUD in an interest bearing a/c until you ask them to transfer the money to your Aus AUD a/c.

Cheers - Don

shaun/lor

i used halewood who were very helpfull, but remember you will still need to open an oz bank account for your new dollars to be transferd into.
i ended up waiting about 11 days for commonwealth bank to change some uk currency into oz account and this was even after i was in oz and accounts had been activated, also they couldent even tell me the excact rate i was getting which was a little scary for a while.
oh and hsbc lost all my paper work for 5 months when i tried to set up an account with them, then they e.mailed me after all that time to say ok we have your stuff we can open your account of course i told them were they could stuff that account.
good luck shaun

etlniwd

I would steer clear of Commonwealth. Like someone said above, they are a bit behind the times. They also charge you just for breathing.

I use Halewood and would recommend them. The deal is done instantly on the phone.

Watch the rates over a period of time. Now is not the time to convert from £ -> $. The rate is 2.68 and falling every day. That's the lowest it's been since the end of June. It will pick up soon - it always does.

aligali

We kept an eye on what the market was doing on the Halewood site but in the end transferred the money through HSBC. We had a First Direct Account in the UK and an Online Savings account in OZ.
We got the same spot rate as Halewood were displaying. It cost about 10 GBP and took 3 days to come through! The only hassle was that we did it from Oz so had to call the UK and deal with it late at night!

If we were ever going to transfer money again I would do a forward contract - much less stress!!

We looked at the Commonwealth Bank but ended up with HSBC as they have some of the most competative interest rates and free banking. It was easy to apply for in the UK.

HSBC have only a limited number of branches but they offer telephone & internet banking which is really easy.

Hope this helps

Alison

Don

Sorry etlniwd, I don't think that advice is necessarily valid. You only have to look back at AUD and NZD vs GBP over 5 or more years (see eg http://www.oanda.com/products/fxgraph/fxgraph.shtml ) to see that the GBP has often for long periods been below AUD 2.6 and below NZD 3.0. A lot depends on your timing requirement. Many immigrants can't wait 5 or more years in the hope (I stress 'hope') that the exchange rate will improve.

The GBP could easily be in for a period of sustained weakness against the AUD and NZD. Many FOREX experts are forecasting precisely this: ie relative NZD and AUD strength against most other main currencies and relative GBP weakness.

Ultimately: who knows? Not me, anyway. The best advice I can give is to take a conservative view. By that, I mean hedge your currency conversion, ie if you are emigrating, probably it could be a good idea to convert (say) half your assets into AUD or NZD at an early stage and (say) half later. You can do this (ie convert now) with a forward contract, ie you don't need to have the cash available immediately (only 10% of the forward contract).

If you waited until the exchange rate was better before converting, you'd be a star. If you waited and the rate went down you'd be a dog. Hedging your bets avoids both these scenarios. But if your brilliant forecasting skills turn out to be wrong and you lose the family 30% of its wealth by worsened exchange rates, how are you going to explain that to the rest of your family? This way you are neither a dog nor a star, just Mr Prudent who gets an 'average' exchange rate.

Cheers - Don

pankala

Don, thanks for the great link.

I think your advice to hedge currency risk is good.

One could "go real scientific" and say that one should hedge (or convert) in proportion to ones certainty of spending money in another currency. Obviously one must convert it before one can spend it in another currency.

People hedge because currency conversion rates are very close to purely random numbers. That is they are near impossible to predict, especially near term. However, looking at broad trends is fun even if, probably, silly.

Historically the Australian pound became 2 Australian $ in 1964. Until 1997 the exchange rate was about $2 / 1 GBP. The Asian crisis saw the rate go to $3 / 1 GBP by 1998. Chartists call the pattern since a rising wedge or triangle with resistance at $3.

If the $ breaks above $3, say around 2005, then chartists will probably say the $ will weaken to $4 around 2007.

Of course, the fundamentalists would say that is all mumbo jumbo, a lot could happen in that time and the $ is equally likely go back to $2.

jackjan

I registered with Moneycorp but ended up using HSBC who offered a better rate to buy forward.

pommiesheila

[QUOTE]Originally posted by dillon
If you get a rate over A$2.90 your winning.

If you get a rate over A$2.90 in the next 6 months, it`d be a miracle...

pommiesheila

Not true. The world has changed recently - corporate and global funds are moving more towards a commodity-based currency (e.g. Aus D). Until, (and if) a resolution re the Iraq crisis is reached, the Aus D will continue to strengthen.

etlniwd

If you're that sure then buy dollars by the boat load now and you'll be stinking rich in a few months time.

Personally I think this is just part of the regular up and down cycle. The dollar has dipped below 2.64 four or five times since the tech crash and it has always shot up again a few months later.

Don

Well I put my money where my mouth is and got nearly completely out of the GBP this morning. Will I feel sick if the pound goes up and the AUD and NZD go down? No way - I bought not just AUD and NZD since I started the immigration process but Euro too so I am reasonably well hedged. USD a possibility too for hedging but not just yet. I realised my future really isn't in the UK so it's a bit stupid to keep too much of our family money in the GBP - a bit like acting as a currency trader when that's not my area of expertise at all. I've been living for some years now outside the UK so can say with a fair degree of confidence that the next few years will not include more than a trip or two to the UK, with no regrets. NZ doesn't work out? - we'll try Australia. Australia doesn't work out - Spain here we come. Spain no go? - Greece next on the list. Etc etc.

That old GBP (pound sterling) is, I reckon, in for a rough ride in the next two years.

Cheers - Don