Can anyone tell me the process of transfering money thru the companies like moneycorp and hifx, I just need a general idead of how you go about it.
Thanks.

I'm sure it's all explained on their respective websites, but from what I remember it's pretty quick and painless. You can open an account with them over the phone (paperwork can be done via fax), and transfer money from your source account almost immediately.

If you have a destination account (Account/BIC/IBAN number etc.) it can be processed on straight away, or it can be held in the new currency by HiFX/Moneycorp etc. for a while until you sort one out.

Generally there is little or no "fee" for the process - the exchange company make their money on the balance of buy/sell rates (but generally this is still a better rate for you the consumer than you'd get from your bank).

Cheers, Iain

Thanks for that, just a little bit more info i need without having to spend ages looking for it. Great job, Cheers.

If you already have an account in Canada, it's worth asking the bank for their daily rate.
We changed money in January and RBC here gave a much better rate than HIFX were offering.

We were checking daily and the bank were offering around the same rate as found on the BBC web page!!!

Worth checking

Linda

Thanks for the info. We dont have an account yet in Canada. We want to transfer our money from the sale of the house when it goes thru. Can you open a Canadian bank account if you still live in UK?

Absolutely. We had a Canadian account two years before we got PR.

It obviously helps if you can be there in person to pick up cards and the like but our HSBC one was opened "remotely" (mind you, we bank with them here).

Cheers, Iain

It is worth noting that HIFX made the whole process really easy for us but their forecasts of the value of the GBP against the CAD were rubbish. I believed them and moved monies accordingly but should have stuck with my own feelings. Keep a close eye on the currency exchange and you will be as good as they are within a few weeks. They were advising clients to 'buy now' as the price climbed through 2.20 and beyond, constantly saying that the climb had reached a ceiling and was going to stop and fall back. It was the equivilent of a weather forecaster looking out the window. They are good at transferring though and I still use them for regular payments etc.

Rising exchange rates are always a gamble. My mum wants to change a good amount of money too while rates are good, she is not planning on living in Canada but visiting for frequent lengths of time. Can she do this without any problems or does she have to be applying for residency?

If you are exchanging your UK money via HIFX (or other company) to deposit into a Canadian account, please contact your UK bank that holds all your cash before you leave.

I have read on here that some people had trouble transferring a lump sum from the bank as there was a limit on the amount - as little as 5000 GBP. Now you don't want that to happen, so what we did was go into our UK bank and notify them of our intentions. I was assigned someone to personally deal with me at the branch, given their direct dial telephone number (not telephone centre) and chose 5 passwords so I could call them on the phone and authorise the payment. Had to sign some paperwork too. It worked a treat and we had no hassle.

I dont really want to put my money into a bank here in England. I just want to sell this house and transfer all that money to Canada to buy our new home etc.

Hi chrisi - I'm sure you will have to put the balance on your house sale into your UK bank account as this is where your solicitor will want to direct it upon completion ? Even if for only a very short time? We sold our house mid January and the balance has been placed on the money markets here for a few weeks at a time - to get a higher interest rate - till we hear about the Canadian job (hopefully on 21st Feb). At least the interest earned is paying for some flights !! Daren't transfer anything till then - but the temptation was huge last week when the exchange rate peaked at 2.36 for half a day !!!! We'll go through HIFX or similar asap -but I will take Linda P's advice and check with our Canadian bank first ... Sorry - don't know your circs - but are you ready to go now, or as soon as house is sold ?

Ooh, forgot to add - depending on the vast wealth you transfer to Canada - I have been advised that a letter from your solicitor or your bank is likely to be required by your new Canadian bank in order to receive/clear your funds - to prove it has been come by legitimately !!!

We are in the middle of this process now and are finding it very stressful; we had on the UK side set every thing up with HIFX then less than 2 weeks from us flying out we went to transfer the money into their account, we done this online, no problem, knowing that the money had to be transferred within 3 days, the next morning the bank phoned asking is this action was done by us as they had held onto it and delayed payment, then they told us it would take 4 working days to clear (I mean how long can it be when doing it online for god sake, bet they do that to make more interest off of you), So when told it would take to long, we where told we could do a chaps payment that would be done with in the day for a one payment of £25, ha it didn’t work like that, the person in question that was helping my husband at the bank first wrote the sort code down wrong, then went on holiday the next day, so we where left with no money in the account and no money in the HIFX account. The money had been put into a holding account, till the problem had been sorted.
So the money took from the Thursday to the following Thursday to be paid, now on the other side in Canada we have spent 2 working days trying to get a fax to work from our new bank (Thursday + Friday) that today we ran out got a scanner and scanned the doc to HIFX, they have in return emailed us telling us our money will be put in our new account by the end of the working day in the UK..


We will wait and see……..

This is just what happened to us, not saying it will happen to every one and that things don’t always go to plan.

Best of luck on what you do…

Ooh, forgot to add - depending on the vast wealth you transfer to Canada - I have been advised that a letter from your solicitor or your bank is likely to be required by your new Canadian bank in order to receive/clear your funds - to prove it has been come by legitimately !!![/QUOTE]

I went into our bank and asked if they needed any proof of where our funds were coming from as i had heard horror stories of bank accounts frozen.
They said there would be no problem if it was being transferred straight from my bank in england to my bank in canada or a solicitor. I explained it was a large amount and they were fine. ALthough i did photocopy my completion statement from solicitor showing she had depoisted the funds just in case they did freeze the account. we had no problems.
with regard to being able to send money over from the bank once we was in canada, barclays would only allow £5000 at a time over the phone. So when we went back to england to sort out some bits we presigned and filled in forms in wait for the sale of our second propertys monies. this means that we can then call a pre arranged person who will then put the transaction through for us.

I went into our bank and asked if they needed any proof of where our funds were coming from as i had heard horror stories of bank accounts frozen.
They said there would be no problem if it was being transferred straight from my bank in england to my bank in canada or a solicitor. I explained it was a large amount and they were fine. ALthough i did photocopy my completion statement from solicitor showing she had depoisted the funds just in case they did freeze the account. we had no problems.
with regard to being able to send money over from the bank once we was in canada, barclays would only allow £5000 at a time over the phone. So when we went back to england to sort out some bits we presigned and filled in forms in wait for the sale of our second propertys monies. this means that we can then call a pre arranged person who will then put the transaction through for us.[/QUOTE]


I just want to close everything here and end a chapter, i guess i can do that for myself and use my partners bank accounts still. Even tho my house is mine when i sell it, can i arrange for my house sale monies to go in my partners or my parents bank account?

I just want to close everything here and end a chapter, i guess i can do that for myself and use my partners bank accounts still. Even tho my house is mine when i sell it, can i arrange for my house sale monies to go in my partners or my parents bank account?[/QUOTE]


As you are selling your house, you will have a solicitor and I would ask them.

I have sold jointly-owned houses and got the solicitor to make the cheque to me alone and they are ok with that (with a signed letter from OH) but I think it is really not a good idea to shut all your bank accounts until you have sold your house and dealt with all the other transactions required when setting up a new home abroad.

If you use a 3rd party bank account where you are not a signatory, you lose all control, even if you trust them implicity, that is not always a good thing. Obviously, if your partner's account is a joint account with you, that is a different matter.

Trust me, as when dealing with banks and solicitors, it's best to keep things as simple as possible. Even simple requests, like a cheque to me alone or in my correct name can be messed up and when time is tight, it can cause huge problems.

The advice to inform your bank of any large transactions is very good - I've found in the past, I have relied on being able to transfer monies and then discovered a limit or a time delay or that the transaction was held up for inspection at a higher level in the bank...