AG_222

Hi all! My foreign fiance works and live in Kuala Lumpur while I am a British national living in London, we have plans to marry and decided that we have to save up money for our wedding - basically what we want right now is to open up a "Wedding Pot Fund". We already have our own savings account in our own countries but we just want an account where we can both transfer our wedding savings into one account without having to pay expensive transfer fees so that we can both track our progress - as well as see our wedding savings GROW

Western Union/Paypal can be such a fuss. We want a proper bank account to monitor our savings, for eg: get an international bank account with branches in London and Kuala Lumpur where we both can access and transfer our savings into one account. We just need to sort out this first step. All your help and answers will be greatly appreciated.

xizzles

Try HSBC? If you're a Premier customer with HSBC in Malaysia, you can get the same status in London and vice versa: and it's way cheaper to achieve Premier status in Malaysia (if memory serves, you will need RM200,000).

I'll wait for the others to chime in with their 2 £ € ¢ ¥'s worth.

AG_222

Thanks for the response, we will check with our HSBC branches in London and KL. We have checked about the direct deposits to open an account, HSBC KL said basic account DP starts from RM20 and the premier account DP starts from RM500. Trying to figure out other ways to open our Wedding Pot Fund.

xizzles

RM500? That's like what, a hundred quid? What are you waiting for?

Hovite

My wife and I had an account at Standard Chartered in KK years ago but not sure whether they would suit your purpose as we only operated the account in Malaysia

AG_222

Yup, that's for the branch in KL. Sounds too good to be true, will visit the actual branch to ask properly.

AG_222

Nice. My fiance will be transferring hers from KL and mine from London.

AG_222

Okay I discovered more info, there is no fee, but the transfer involves currency conversion following the ~3% cost of their exchange rate margin.

ex reg

Any particular reason you just want to use just one account??

AG_222

So we can see our wedding savings grow in one spot? We already have two separate savings in each of our countries, but we just want one "wedding fund pot". How else can we save up?

IanBlakeley

I have HSBC premier, their rates arent that good. To get sterling here in large(ish) quantities I use transferwise for small amounts the best rates is a UK credit card and withdraw from a local ATM, pay it back PDQ and there's no extra currency charges. At least with Halifax Clarity and Santander Zero, maybe others.

AG_222

Wow, thanks for the info!

stepen

An account with local transfers in two countries without fees doesn't really exist.
Save locally and then transfer a bigger chunk once in a while.

AG_222

Good idea too!

eCdD

Worth to mention that there is a big exchange rate spread between Master Card and Visa. You get a free Visa card with no transaction fees at every corner, but better burn it before going to Malaysia.