Exchange rate
 

I see we just pootled up over $2.05 to the pound again. Wonder how long this little upward trend is going to last, I have some savings that are just itching to move to my 'buying a house in Canada' fund at a decent rate :).

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Bleedin' typical, innit? Just a couple of weeks after I had no choice but to move a stack of pounds over here at below $2.

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Yeah me too. I had to finally bite the bullet a couple of weeks ago at $2.016.
Ah well, at least now I;m spared the constant worry/checking/second guessing on exchange rates. Although as I'm planning a trip back to UK later this year I'd quite like it to go down.............. ;)

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Yeah, I'd just like to see it spike up to $2.20 again for a day, then I could transfer everything I have left here, not look so stupid for not transferring at $2.50, and never have to worry about it again :).

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As a general rule, you can expect it to go down in the fourth week of every month (ie when I get paid). :(

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Interested to know who you are watching - and who you have decided to exchange with?

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I've been watching the yahoo.com rate quotes. In the past they've been close to the rate HSBC gave me for transferring 20k+ pounds: though I won't have that much this time (unless it does spike up high and I shift the ISA money too :)) so it won't be quite as good.

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thanks for that :D will check them out

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We are going to use HIFX, check them out http://www.hifx.co.uk/

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Tell me about it!

Yes, I tend to watch the dollar going up/down/up/down all day at work on the BBc site. Not that I'm obsessed or anything. It's quite exciting when it starts going up!

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I do exactly the same, I also have it on interday and I refresh constanlty.

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And equally depressing when it drops :mad:

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Ssshhh! Thinking bad thoughts makes it go down!


:p

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I was thinking of opening an HSBC account both here and Edmonton for ease of transfer of regular cash to Canada (I have a small company pension,) did you compare the rates they offer to any of the exchange companies? Stu

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I have HSBC accounts and have used them and HIFX form transfers. HSBC are good if you ned the money really quickly (last time the transfer took less than 10 minutes before I saw it sitting in my Canadian account) but HIFX offer noticably better rates

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I used HIFX when I first moved here in Sept 04. The rate then was 2.32, about .05 better than the nearest competitor. My wife and I still have the occasional transfer to make but use HSBC now as they see preferable for smaller amounts. ;)

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I really don't understand why I see so many references to using HSBC. Banks do not give you as good a rate of exchange as FX companies and generally their fees per transfer are also higher.

The best way to get something like a monthly pension amount across is to open an account in the UK with Nationwide Building Society. They are the only UK financial institution that charges NO FEES at all for use of ATMs internationally. Some banks may say they charge no fees but in fact what they do is give you a poor exchange rate. With Nationwide you can withdraw your money in Canada at the ATM and the rate of exchange is the Interbank Rate. Even FX companies take 1%.

Nobody can beat Nationwide. HSBC is one of the worst for rates and fees and that is being said by someone who has a son quite high up in HSBC here in Canada. I could get a preferred account with them at no charge and I'd still be better off with Nationwide!

So my advice is for large one of transfers, use an FX company, you should be able to get your money for 1% less than the Interbank Rate. For smaller monthly amounts just visit the ATM in Canada and withdraw from a Nationwide account.

Also, Nationwide's e-savings account pays the most CONSISTENT high rate of interest. So sit money in the e-savings, transfer it as needed to the current account via online banking and withdraw from the ATM.

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With the lack of interest paid by Canadian banks I guess the interest paid in England would be better. The only consideration would be any interest earned would have to be declared on the tax return?

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that all depends on how you are handling any UK income tax wise uk4canada.

You have a choice. You can declare the income in the UK or Canada. If you declare in the UK, then you will pay tax their at either 22% or 40% depending on the total amount of UK income obviously. If you do that and are living in Canada, then you are SUPPOSED to declare the income in Canada as well but show you paid tax in the UK. If there is a difference in tax (ie. you paid 22% on it in the UK and would have to pay 25% on it in Canada, then you are SUPPOSED to pay the difference in Canada. (ie. 3%).

The question then becomes do you declare it in Canada at all and if you choose not to, how likely is it that Canada will find out you have that income. If you are going to an ATM and withdrawing cash which you do not then deposit into a Canadian bank account, it is unlikely they will know you have this income. If you deposit it into a Canadian bank, have other Canadian income and get picked at random one year for a tax review, then they may see deposits in your bank account and ask you to account for where this money is coming from.

Obviously I am not suggesting you do anything illegal of course.

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I had this discussion with you before when you spelled your username somewhat differently :p - I compared HSBC with Moneycorp and HIFX for 3 separate transactions in 2002/03 and got a better rate from HSBC each time, not to mention their 10 GBP flat charge. You said last time that I imagined this but I think it's worth mentioning again, especially wrt to the low fee.

Can you give us today's rates and fees for all three as an example of the advantage you mention?

Wrt to the Nationwide Flexaccount, I don't think people use HSBC in Canada to access their UK money particularly, rather to have a ready to use account when they arrive/to service property expenses before they move. For some the lack of branches is a shock when they get here - not to you or me as there were only 3 in all Scotland - for others their apparent unwillingness to give credit (untested by me) is a pain, or the fees too high and they switch... but that's not to say they don't provide a useful service to UK expats and I'm not sure why you feel the need to banner wave every time their name is mentioned ;)

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I have no idea what rate you got from HSBC in the past and no way of checking it against what rate you would have got from an FX company. I do know that you cannot get a quote from Moneycorp unless you are registered and have a trading account with them. Are you registered? The other factor to consider is that sometimes people confuse companies like Travelex with real Forex companies. At the moment for example Travelex shows the $ at 1.966 to the £ when in fact the Interbank rate at this moment is 2.020. Moneycorp would buy for you at 2.00 (plus a £15 transaction fee)as a spot price. A big spread. The only answer I can give you is to check what rate they would give you today and compare it to someone like Moneycorp who would give you a spot price of 1% below the Interbank Rate which is shown on their website.

It is my understanding that HSBC will not give you a better rate but I see no point in my saying you're wrong or you saying I'm wrong. The proof is in the puddding I'm sure we will both agree. Perhaps there is someone reading this thread who has had recent quotes.

I agree the ATM withdrawal issue is a different thing altogether and wasn't trying to suggest any connection. In that regard I KNOW HSBC cannot match Nationwides' no fees.

Canadian banks by the way are just as bad. CIBC for example will charge you $3.00 per ATM withdrawal plus 2.5% on the amount exchanged if you use a CIBC card in a foreign country. But at least they admit it up front. Most of the UK banks hide the real fees.

As for waving the banner, I'm a big fan of Nationwide. I think with good cause. Perhaps as immigrants you are not as concerned as I am as a frequent traveller. For people who make frequent trips to other countries and spend fair amounts of money while there, it can make a huge difference. For example if you take a simple holiday to say the USA for 2 weeks and spend £3500 total, the difference in fees can amount to anything from £35 to £166 from one bank to another. With Nationwide the fees will be zero, nil, nada, every time. The fees if you are using a Canadian bank will be just as bad.

On the Lonely PLanet forum called the ThornTree, this hunt for the best bank for ATM use internationally has been discussed for years. No one in Canada, the UK, the USA, Australia or New Zealand, which is where the majority of posters are from, have been able to find a match for Nationwide.

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Well, when I transferred just under 10k pounds to my HSBC account this week the rate on yahoo (which I presume is the interbank rate, it's currently showing the same rate as the moneycorp site) was about 2.0320 and the money transferred at 2.00... about a 1.5% fee. I paid less in the past when transferring larger sums.

But yeah, if I was transferring 250,000 pounds in one go (or whatever) I'd think about shopping around. On the other hand, the daily variation in rates could easily be more than the difference in fees between two companies...

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Fair example MarkG. With Moneycorp you would have got $2.01 which on your 10k would have meant $100 more in your Canadian account. If you are happy paying HSBC $100 more to transfer your money then that's fine. But I'm sure if you had been transferring £100,000 for a house purchase you would have wanted the $1000 difference it would have made.

If you were taking that same £10k over the course of a year (ie. monthly income of some kind) and did it via HSBC transfer, you would off course have got an even worse rate. Let's estimate 1.99. That means that you would have got $400 less overall than the Interbank Rate. Withdrawing that same money at $500 a time from an ATM using a Nationwide debit card, you would have got that $400 in your pocket.

I have yet to meet someone who would not know what to do with an extra $100 or $400. Then there is the transfer fee. On one transfer of 10k both HSBC and Moneycorp would charge you a £15 fee. What about on monthly transfers? Moneycorp can be set up for monthly transfers with a £8 fee per transfer. I don't know about HSBC. But those fees are lost on top of the exchange fees. In a monthly income scenario that could be another $200 a year lost.

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Sure, but it also adds more complexity to transferring the money: it's much easier for me to transfer Sterling into that account and have them convert it than to transfer Canadian dollars.

Probably, but to me it's not enough of a sum to be worth investing a lot of extra time investigating the options... after all, that's equivalent to about two hours' salary or a two thirds of a cent move on the shares I own.

And heck, if I spent that two hours investigating and didn't do the transfer til the next day, I'd have lost more than that anyway even at a rate closer to the interbank rate.

I'm not saying that you're wrong, just that that, for me, there are more important things to worry about right now: like whether the exchange rate is down to $1.80 by the time I move :).

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In terms of getting money from UK to Canada, I was going to use Money Corp because everyone including my realtor recommended them. On the day I needed to trade, I was apalled at the difference between their rate and the current interbank exchange rate. I think the Interbank rate was 2.065 and they were offering me 2.02.

In a panic, I phoned HIFX for a quote and they got me about as near to 2.06 as you can get, i.e. a half cent or so off the interbank rate. I went for it and did the savings calculations after. I was transfering about £1/4 million. That made me an extra $10,000 by doing a bit of home work. Boy am I glad I went into work late that day. I also compared to what I would have got had I traded a few weeks earlier (Christmas 2005), when it had hit a rock bottom of something like 1.95. The difference has more or less paid for my car and left me enough for gas for a year.

I would definitely recommend speaking with HIFX in addition to any other foreign currency traders you're thinking of using. In my case, and no doubt in part to do with the high transaction value, they did me a great deal and saved me a fortune. They were also super efficient and one of their people really helped push my deal through as quickly as possible after we'd agreed the rate.

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well done g. It definitely pays to shop around when moving a lump sum. Where I have referred to Moneycorp, it is only as an example. If I were moving anything over £10-20k I would be checking at least 3 or 4 forex companies.

MarkG, to use Moneycorp vs the bank requires the following. Call Moneycorp instead of the bank and get a rate. Agree the sale. So far no difference. Then they e-mail the transaction, you sign and fax back one copy. That's it. If that isn't worth $100 to you so be it. Takes me about 10 minutes tops including waiting for their e-mail to arrive, print out a copy and send my fax back.

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Absolutely agree, don't take what you read on here as gospel, check it all out yourself :D

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I'm 'Athome' with the Nationwide thing. The last of the true Building Societys, great stuff.

as for larger amounts, I've just used my telephone banking with the Woolwich straight into my CIBC account, it takes about 36 hours to arrive and costs me 30 quid but on 2 occassions i have got a tiny fraction below the inter-bank rate and certainly better than hiFex

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I'm not arguing with Athome about Nationwide, although he's trying ;) I don't have one, I've no need of it... as he says, it's about lifestyle and travel money needs. This year I've been to the UK twice - used my UK account, US - have a bunch of US cash I bought when the GBP/USD rate was sky high, and Cuba - took CAD cash and had to screwed on the compulsory Peso exchange rate... so Nationwide wouldn't have been of benefit to me.

Interested to hear you've had better rates elsewhere than MoneyCorp or HIFX... that's also been my experience.

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And as a slight diversion. What on earth happened last week to cause the Cdn dollar to jump up in value against all currencies. Initially I thought it was rumours of a drop in UK interest rates, but the change appears to be relative to currencies other than the pound as well

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Well I'm not arguing with anyone but maybe she could have used a Nationwide account. Consider this.

In the last couple of weeks I've put 50% deposits on some furniture and appliances. The purchases were made in 3 locations and required deposits of $3300, $5250 and $4400. All done with a Nationwide debit card. All exchanged at the FULL Interbank Rate. If you add the other 50% which will come along later, the total is over $26,000.

So I see 3 advantages here. 1. I didn't need to transfer the money to a Canadian account, I just used an existing UK debit card, no muss, no fuss. 2. If I saved even 1% on exchanging this way that amounts to $260. A very nice dinner out with the wife. 3. Until I used my Debit card the money was sitting in a UK account earning 4.65% for me which it wouldn't have been if it were sitting in a Canadian account.

If I could, I'd buy my home using my Nationwide debit card and credit card. Unfortunately Real Estate Agents and Lawyers aren't set up to take debit cards. So your stuck with an electronic transfer to either a bank in Canada or directly to the lawyer's trust account. Look at what 1% of your house price is and that is what could have been saved at least if you got the full Interbank Rate on the exchange.

Making as many major purchases using your Nationwide Credit card and Debit Card as you can, just makes sense. I don't own any shares in Nationwide (only because they don't sell any) and have no vested interest in promoting them other than because I think they offer the best deal to UK residents, travellers and expats, by far.

Also consider this. People get all worked up over how to open a Canadian acount ahead of time etc. Why do they even need one? What you need is access to funds. Only in a case where a debit or credit card cannot be accepted do you need either cash (get it from an ATM) or an electronic transfer if it's above the daily max an ATM will let you draw. (I double that daily max by the way by having two accounts and two debit cards.)

I must confess I opened a Canadian account in the first week after we arrived but only through necessity. Having bought 'future' dollars from a Forex company some time ago to lock in the exchange rate, I needed somewhere to have them transferred to as they would pay no interest to us sitting in the Forex company's account. So I opened a Canadian account, transferred the money in and promptly moved it into a GIC. 3% is better than nothing. But other than that, we haven't used that Canadian bank at all. Not to get cash or make a purchase.

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You haven't understood my foreign money needs, see previous post - I have UK funds in UK accounts that I spend on trips to the UK, I have Canadian funds in a Canadian account that I spend in Canada. The US "cash stash" will run out one of these days but for now travel to the US is amply covered ;)

You are accessing small sums of UK funds to spend in your day-to-day life in Canada, I can't think of a single occasion where I've done that. For your needs, and for stashing hidden accounts from Revenue Canada (that is what you're doing, isn't it?!) a Nationwide flex account sounds like just the ticket. You've failed to convince me it would save a red cent for my needs though, no matter how much you bang on.

Edit: in response to your large edit, people need Canadian accounts to service their property, have child tax credits paid to them, etc etc. An example off the top of my head - I think the TIPP people would have laughed until it hurt if I'd asked them to deduct from my (non-existant) Nationwide account :D

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Groan, let's not compare apples and oranges. Yes peope need a Canadian account ONCE they start living and earning in Canada. My comments apply solely to the initial movement of money from the UK to Canada and how to do that most effectively.

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Apples and oranges yourself. You brought Nationwide into it... and they can have little to do with "the initial movement of money from the UK to Canada and how to do that most effectively" by your own admission :D

I maintain that plenty of people have a need for a Canadian account before being resident here, those of us who bought properties from overseas was an example I already mentioned.

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I have never seen a site like this for the bickering that goes on!! The threads starts off as good and informative, or a piece of fun, and then there seems to be one common denominator puts in her tuppence worth and the arguing starts. Can you tell me exactly what your role on this site is "Moderator" :confused:

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Spy!

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Unfortunately I don't have the luxury of putting posters on "ignore" :D

I think Athome is pulling the wool over everyone's eyes. Why doesn't he come clean and admit who he really is?

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Are you suggesting I am the Chairman of Nationwide or something Biiiinks? :)


Why would you need a Canadian account to buy a property in Canada?
"those of us who bought properties from overseas was an example I already mentioned."

We bought our property from the UK. A simple tranfer of funds to our Real Estate Agents trust account via electronic transfer did the trick. No need for a bank account in Canada at all.

I offer my opinion. You're free to agree or disagree with it obviously but I think it's time to put this one to bed. So bite your tongue and just don't reply. The End.

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Yawn. I suggest you're a previously banned user trying to be clever. Again.

How did you pay your condo fees, your TIPP installments, your utilities etc from outside Canada... ? I ain't interested, save your keystrokes, it's a purely rhetorical question :D

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LOL Gezza ~ she is not that interesting :zzz: