Lanyu

They use an Agent Bank for everything as they are a building society.

I haven't had to do a swift with them yet as the whole process is taking so dam long hopefully the light at the end of the tunnel is getting bigger.

I've used the foreign cheque service £12.50 which was the best I could get shopping round.

When I use to work there people were happy to use there service as they had very good exchange rates and you could phone up and they would tell you what exactly what that rate would be till 1pm then it would change after that. This was 10 years ago though!

When you say agent bank you mean the bank Nationwide use to do the transfer (was HSBC) or the receiving bank?

PJakes

Lanyu, Thank you for replying. By Agent Bank, I mean the bank that Nationwide uses for the transfer/exchange.

Lanyu

From what I've read in the PDF Overseas payment I can't see anything that suggest you will be charged anything other than the £20.00 by Nationwide. It would be worth checking with the receiving bank to find out if they charge for receiving.

Pulaski

The sending bank has no way to know what the receiving bank will charge, and most banks charge a fee for receiving a wire. If you use xe.com, and probably other competing remitting services, you can choose to have the funds credited by "ACH" (similar to BACS in the UK), so the funds will be received in the US as a regular domestic (within the US) interbank transfer, and therefore no wire fee will be charged.

Also, a lot of the cost of sending funds to the US is the "spread" on the exchange rate, which is often substantial for relatively small transfers (under $50,000). Typically the spread offered by the on-line remitters is much less than the banks offer, so you can expect to get perhaps 3% more dollars, or more, for the same £ amount by using an on-line remitter compared to using a bank.

LucyWoodhead

In the end to transfer the bulk of our money (savings, sale of house etc etc), we used halo financial. Michael hart was great - 0207 350 5474. I would recommend finding someone in your local bank branch to liaise with who will be happy to deal with your finances once you have moved too - makes things easier than called a UK call center from the USA.

He clearly explained how everything worked, gave market advice so we could time the transfer appropriately etc.

I would say look at exchange rates offered, not just the fees. The exchange rate you receive make a big different on Transferring huge sums, making one off fees become almost insignificant.

There was slight room for negotiation on the rate too, just a heads up!

Good luck!

Pulaski

As I said in post #34, above.