rick78

Hiya

We have an account with Kiwibank setup for when we arrive but we havent sent any money over yet due to the relatively poor rate. I think I had a previous thread where I asked whether its feasible to take some GBP over, deposit it as GBP in a bank and then exchanage whenever its necessary/rate improves.

I contacted Kiwibank about this and it seems its possible... but what I was wondering from those of you in NZ... what exchange rate are you getting to convert GBP back to NZD?

If I think about converting my holiday money back to GBP in the UK we always get a much worse rate than when you buy foreign currency... is this the same case in NZ?

Anyone have an international Kiwibank account... happy with it?

Cheers.

Bo-Jangles

The thing to watch with those international currency accounts is not so much the exchange rate as you'll get the latest spot rate, that fluctuates constantly by the hour.

The big kicker is the interest rate, you get absolutely bu$$er all for holding an 'offshore' balance, so best you can do is to either bite the bullet and convert to Kiwi $s and earn the interest here or leave it in pounds to earn interest in the UK and hope for a better exchange rate.

thedtb

Do we like we did. Leave your money in your UK Bank account.... at a time that suits, use a currency broker to transfer the money to your NZ bank account.

We haven't done it for a while now but before we left the UK we did a transfer via Currencies Direct to our Kiwibank account. (I can give you the name of the person we dealt with at Currencies Direct if you wish).

Because we'd done the initial transfer prior to leaving the UK and had been through their security and ID checks (anti-money-laundering blah blah etc), it got to the point with the regular transfers that followed, that I'd simply log in to my UK bank account online, pay the £'s sterling I wanted to move to Currencies Direct (via a simple bank payment) and then drop a friendly email to my contact at Currencies Direct, saying "I've just paid £XXXX across to you, please can you transfer it to the same account in NZ as last time". Of course I'd have to quote client numbers etc on both the payment and in the email, but it's all very straightforward stuff. Usually within 24 hours of sending that email I'd have one back from him/them with the contract attached in PDF detailing the exchange rate applied to the "deal" and a further 2-3 working days later my money would be in my Kiwibank account.

In the VERY early days I used to check the rate in advance... but I quickly stopped doing this and just transferred the money anyway.

Some people will tell you that you're better bringing all your money across to NZ sooner rather than later as you're likely to earn more interest on it here than in the UK apparently and it beats waiting for the exchange rates to improve.... I have no experience or real knowledge of this field though.