BlackBeardie

Premier FX were a great company. Unfortunately it seems it was carried forward my one man, Peter Rexstrew who sadly passed away.
I am giving TorFx a go.

BillBullock

I will complete your sentence: "who sadly passed away (allegedly) having stolen about 10.6M Pounds from innocent customers of Premier FX".

Pgmills

Exactly!

Pulaski

There doesn't appear to be a whole lot of information available on-line, but what I can find is that Premier FX appears to have had two lines of business - [1] the FX broker-remitter business, where you give the company one currency and they exchange it for a credit in a different currency to your bank account in another country, and this is what they were registered to do, and [2] where the company was operating "accounts", taking "deposits", and paying interest, i.e. they were operating an illegal bank. I don't want to "blame the victims", but it appears that those people who lost most of the money we defrauded by an illegal banking business, not as a result of using a registered FC broker-remitter.

It is the distinction between being an FX broker-remitter and being a bank which is exactly what I have been warning people here on BE about when recommendations for Transferwise's "borderless account" are posted, as this is also a business/ activity that IMO skates along the edges of what is and is not acceptable, and is certainly more risky than keeping your savings in a bank, building society, or other institution that is registered and regulated to hold deposits for customers. In other words, I have few concerns about using Transferwise, or similar FX broker-remitters to transfer money, but I have, and will continue to recommend that you don't hold funds "on deposit" with any such company for a single minute longer than necessary.

Pulaski

Now Travelex is in trouble.

Diddion

In a previous post on this thread you mentioned Transferwise. I have started to use them due to their exceptional rates, but are you suggesting that there are additional risks with them. If so, how do those risks arise? Thanks.

Pulaski

Per my earlier post, IMO, the risk is using the "borderless account" i.e. depositing money with Transferwise, rather than using their exchange-remittance service, where I think the risk is low/acceptable.

liveaboard

The world economy is in meltdown!
DO NOT take risks with your savings at this time. Even 'real' banks are shaky.

There is no way for a customer to tell which of these small exchange forms are well financed, which are pyramid schemes, which are about to collapse.
But at this moment in history, there will be FAR more collapse than usual.

There, I've said it [again].

MidAtlantic

I agree, but you don't need to deposit funds in the borderless account for any extended period of time. I have suggested using it several times for the collection of funds from overseas (eg for those resident in the USA who cannot open UK bank accounts). It provides a mechanism for funds to be deposited which can then be exchanged and remitted elsewhere jut as quickly as with the exchange-remittance service. It is, of course, the same service.

Pulaski

I agree if that's what you do, but I am sure there are some people using a borderless account as if it is a normal bank account.

To anyone else reading this, I would think of the relative risk as being the amount you send to whatever your FX broker-remitter of choice is multiplied by the number days that you don't have access to your money between sending it and receiving it. So a simple £->$ conversion of £100 into USD that takes 24 hours/ overnight would have a relative risk of 100 pound-days, and sending £100 to India and converting it to rupees taking 5 days would have a relative risk of 500 pound-days. If you were to hold £100 in a borderless account for a week and add another £100 on the sixth day, then have the $260 proceeds credited to your US bank account on the seventh day, then your relative risk would be (700+100) pound-days. If you put £10,000 in a borderless account for a month your relative risk is going to be 300,000 pound-days!