Transferring money
 

Edit: I have just spoken to someone at TorFX who was very helpful and managed to explain in 5 minutes what a couple of hours of googling would maybe have done (as well as explaining the impact of Boris' argument with his girlfriend on this week's exchange rate. It's terrifying how arbitary it is...)

Apologies in advance but I'm going to be inundating the board with new threads over the next few weeks.

We are going to need to transfer the proceeds of our house and our savings and wondered if anyone has any advice on moving large sums (less than £1m but not much)? I have the Transferwise app but wondered if there is something better for this sum? Google is a minefield. We are planning to spread the transfer over a number of weeks to mitigate the impact of any exchange rate fluctuations (as it will be close to October's Brexit deadline this may be nail biting).

It would be great to have personal recommendations please.

Thanks a lot

Re: Transferring money
 

I recently transfered 100k and found the best way was to open a gbp account in my asb account and transfer the money into it from the UK. It cost £20 to transfer it from the UK to NZ and when I changed it to $$ I got it at the then current exchange rate as it spiked recently to $1.98

Re: Transferring money
 

We opened a free account with Moneycorp and did the funds transfer through them. Their minimal commission costs are all included in the exchange rate you agree. You can lock in a rate online via your Moneycorp online account or for an even better exchange rate you can do it live on the phone with one of their brokers. Way way better rate than any bank. Takes a few days to come through in your account at the NZ end and no transaction costs at either end and we didn't get charged anything from our UK bank to transfer the money to Moneycorp or charged anything from our NZ bank to receive the money so the only thing you need concentrate on is the exchange rate agreed with Moneycorp.
There's a few companies like Moneycorp who do the same thing. We selected them as their security measures and funds guarantees/funds protection were the best we could find at the time......there's always a risk that when you transfer your money to an intermediary, what happens if they then go in to liquidation and they have your cash ???
You'll need an NZ account open to transfer in to.

Re: Transferring money
 

Why worry abut that? LOL its the same risk you take transferring all your worldly funds into NZ banking system - there is absolutely no protection in New Zealand which is an outlier by international standards in not having any deposit protection scheme for money in the bank.

Not that I would know but I would suggest one cannot be too careful with a million quid sloshing around and I would suggest OP gets some some proper financial advice and proceed with utmost caution in terms of best use of money. For sure I would be looking at spreading it around quite a bit and structuring to take best advantage of interest and any tax breaks available if it remains in UK. I certainly would not have all the eggs transferring in one basket from a to b without some serious thought.

Re: Transferring money
 

We need all the money in NZ to buy a house, and I was told by TorFX yesterday that, in the case of a no deal Brexit (looking increasingly likely) we could go into recession next year so no guarantees the sitaution will improve in the short to medium term. So we would be spunking money on rent/mortgage when we could at least be living mortgage free, even if we do have to reign in our dreams of a big house with a pool...
We are also looking into forward contracting, but this is tricky as house sales in the UK are not guarranteed until exchange of contracts a week or so before completion so this is also risky. We have literally chosen the worst time to move :-(

My MIL has just informed my husband still has his ASB account from when he left 19 years ago so that's a start and thanks JustCol - we'll look into that. Oh to have an exchange rate of 1.98!

Re: Transferring money
 

I use HIFX now XE.com. I dont pay transfer fees but then have never had large amounts to transfer over. had 80K when we first came over but bought that over in dribs and drabs over a couple of weeks.
I would say that you should retain your bank account in the UK with some money in it and use it, its a nightmare to open/reopen accounts in UK if you do need to go back - holidays return home etc. that would be on eless thing to think abou. Its handy for presents to UK family etc.

Re: Transferring money
 

Thanks, I'll have a look into XE.
I have a meeting with Barclays next week to discuss moving, and I'm definitely going to keep at least one bank account open as we have BTL property, but would also like to keep the kid's accounts that they could use in the future and one that's not a current account so more secure.

My mind is totally boggling at the moment with the enormity of what we are doing :-(

Re: Transferring money
 

Re: Transferring money
 

Not strictly true.
Agreed there isn't any specific banking deposit insurance in NZ but the Reserve Bank does have the OBR System and it may be possible to get in there and remove your money without loss once the bank re-opens with unfrozen assets being available to customers depending on the status of the account or investment.
There is talk of a new NZ deposit insurance scheme being introduced very soon which should guarantee at least 90% of any lost funds back and to align with several other countries but unsure when this will come in.
I suppose the best advice is to make sure you invest your cash where it is protected and refrain from keeping high positive balances of cash in an NZ bank as it may be at risk if the bank was to go bust.
I believe if the bank is Australian or part Australian - e.g ANZ or similar then the Australian rules apply and they do have a AU$250 000 bank deposit guarantee.