Moving money to the US
 

Hi all,

Been a long time since I posted here. Wanted to see if y'all had any thoughts on the following.

We have just sold our house in the UK and have a substantial amount of money to move over to the US. Not quite sure how we are going to move this yet but I've came across the following options:

1) HSBC Online transfer from our UK account to our US account. 4GBP to send, $15 to receive. Limited to 50,000 GBP daily limit. Exchange rate not ideal and would have to send multiple transfers.

2) Transferwise.com in one go. Exchange rate better but would need to go through the SWIFT network collecting unknown fees from unknown umber of intermediary banks. $15 fee to receive. Better exchange rate would mean i'd get about $1,000 more. Concerned about using a company to transfer that is not a bank.

3) Transferwise.com in multiple smaller amounts. Amounts of 24,000 GBP will be sent using ACH so no receiving fee. Need to wait for each one to clear before I can sent then next one.

4) Fly to UK and withdraw cash. Come back to US with said cash in a briefcase and attempt to deposit in local bank while speaking in my best Russian accent.

Anyone been through this process before or have any other ideas? BTW - I was just joking about option #4 - I don't do a very good Russian accent...

Thanks all!

Re: Moving money to the US
 

Don't do 4), please! :scaredhair:

ETA I see you were just joking, but that isn't even funny! :unsure:

Of your options I'd definitely recommend 2). The "unknown fees" are at most $35, and a transfer UK to US would at most have one intermediary bank, assuming your account in the US is with a large or very large bank. So you'd have one wire-send fee, one intermediary bank fee and one wire receive fee. If those three are more than $80 aggregate you've been very unlucky. ..... So by taking the better exchange rate you're waaay ahead.

Re: Moving money to the US
 

I have a First Direct account in the UK and an HSBC Premier account here. I usually buy dollars in London using HSBC currency traders. For the best rate they usually want a minimum of 60k GBP at a time. I then transfer the money from my HSBC $ account in London to my account here. Have never been charged any fees and the exchange rate is within a tiny fraction of the market rate, way better than any quoted rate. Never had any limits imposed either, have transfered multiple hundreds of thousands at a time.

Re: Moving money to the US
 

Don't use the mainline banks. You can get much better deals.

I used TorFx for my UK house proceeds. I had one wire fee of $15.00 from my American bank, but overall got an excellent deal. I have used them a few times since also and always been very satisfied.

Re: Moving money to the US
 

Depending on how quickly you want to move the money (and what you think may happen to exchange rates) you may want to consider whether it would be wise to transfer the money in several chunks anyway.

Also, don't forget to do the appropriate FBAR disclosures next year.

Re: Moving money to the US
 

Those factors are related.

Another BE'er has reported getting consistently excellent rates from his bank, but I am fairly certain he is transferring six figure sums. If you're moving that much money the banks will do great deals.

Re: Moving money to the US
 

We moved the fund's from the sale of a UK investment property to the US two yrs ago.
We used world first who we have used a number of times however they are only able to transfer money to certain states.

Re: Moving money to the US
 

+1 Worldfirst - no bank charges either end, good exchange rate and done within a day. However, you do need to set this account up in advance as they will want to verify you and your bankaccount is legit.

Re: Moving money to the US
 

I keep running into the same issue of only being able to transfer 10k a day out of my UK bank to any of these FX providers. Anyone know of one that can pull the money instead of me having to send out to them?

Re: Moving money to the US
 

I've just run into the same issue transferring Euros from my Irish (possibly the worst time ever to be doing this).


My bank was unfortunately fairly inflexible (aside from going into an Irish branch - not exactly practical from several thousand miles away), but I know that some banks allow higher transfers eg by using a card reader/debit card combination - I used HiFx, and they accepted this form of payment.

Re: Moving money to the US
 

We had to move more than £10k last year although it was from France not the UK. Our bank knew what we wanted to do and how much so it happened. The only hitch we ran into was that (so we were told) the french authorities demand a 24 hour delay before the money leaves the country.

You should call the bank and get through to someone who can resolve this issue. Is the money already in the bank? What reason are they giving for limiting the amount? UK law or bank rules? If it's UK law, then not much you can do but if it's a bank thing then definitely negotiate with them, especially if the money isn't yet in your account...

If you plan to use this money as deposit to secure a mortgage here in the USA, you will have to provide a paper trail showing where the money came from (house sale documents) right through to it arriving in your US bank account. You will need to do this for each "batch" of money that arrives....

Re: Moving money to the US
 

We didn't have this issue with worldfirst we just deposited the funds electronically from our UK bank into worldfirsts barclays account in London next day the funds were in our U.S. account. We transferred a six figure amount in one transaction no problem.

Re: Moving money to the US
 

Our bank was Barclays France and we didn't have any problems. Sounds like the OP's problem is with his bank. Bet if he walked into a Barclays branch and asked them if they wanted a serious load of dosh deposited for a week or so before he transferred it , he could get an account.

Re: Moving money to the US
 

I've used Transferwise many times, although admittedly for amounts less then 10k. I've been impressed with their service and the money is in my account within about 2 days. Maybe you could do a smaller 'test' transfer to see if you feel comfortable with it.

Re: Moving money to the US
 

International banking/transfers through UK banks is rarely simple or inexpensive. There are exceptions, but they are exceptions rather than the rule.

That explains a lot about why "international transfer services" are largely a UK enterprise. Most UK Retail banks just aren't equipped for it and regard it as something "special", for which there is a premium charged. It's been many years since I've dealt with US banks, but IIRC, US banks are similar in that regard.