I will be landing in Halifax in 10 days.

Looking to take around £7000 to eventually deposit into my new Canadian bank account, yet to be set up.

What is the best way to take it? If I keep it in my UK account and withdraw in Canada I can only take out the equvilent of £300 a day, with a withdrawal fee of 2.5%.

Is there a fee-free way to convert the money in one go, and take it into Canada? I don't want to do cash in case I run into problems. I am taking a stop in Iceland on the way and would hate to get mugged for 7k!!

I bank with HSBC, has anyone got any suggestions?

1. Custom House Currency Exchange (or other Fx broker).
2. Open CDN$ account with a small deposit cheque written on UK bank account to open account.
3. Set up account with Custom House and give them a direct deposit mandate to withdraw funds from your UK account.
4. Book a rate with them, they do the rest and funds in your CDN$ account in days.

I found HSBC to be worse than useless and any FX rate they offered was well below what I get from Custom House.

What I would do is this:

- Leave as much as you can in the UK.
- Open a CAD$ bank account with some token sum when you arrive.
- Use an FX broker to do the transfer (7K won't get you a great rate, but it will be better than thomas cook or something similar)

I use a couple of hundred in travelers cheques to open a Canadian account on a recce. It saved waiting for a UK cheque to clear. Then, as said above, use an FX company to transfer the rest.