Wol

Anyone in receipt of the UK state pension ?

I am interested in the options for transferring the payments out here - will the UK pension people do a "block" transfer of *all* Australian expats each month, and let the transferring bank distribute the moneys where they are due? My company pension does this - and the bank rips off the pensioner something royally! (In fact, I changed to doing it myself through OzForex, and saved thousands in commissions and exchange rates).

Or, will the pension be transferred into an Australian bank if you nominate one?

CadburysFingers

I will bump this one for you, as its a question that gets asked a lot.

mgilmour

I have actually researched this in some depth with Jim Tilley from British Pensioners in Australia and went through his last four months of transfers and conversions. The good news for people in this position is that the British Govt appears to do this very efficiently. They convert everybody's pension in one massive transfer and so get 'interbank rates', they then transfer fee free to peoples Aussie accounts.

We would have loved all this business at OzForex but we can't do any better! We may look at a product where people can fix the rate for say 12 months and so people will know how many Aussie Dollars they will receive each month. With the current system it fluctuates from month to month.

Hope that helps.

Regards
Matt Gilmour
Managing Director
OzForex P/L

Wol

Thank you, Matt.

I can't see why my own pension scheme cannot - apparently - obtain interbank rates for their Australian, NZ etc, pensioners. I believe the answer is that the managers, having signed a contract with the Bank of New York, feel they've "washed their hands" of the problem and just don't care any more.

Their answer to all my letters and emails is that the "BoNY rates compare very favourably with other banks that were investigated". Of course, this begs the question that bank rates are usually not the best anyway!