foynaven

Hello all: I am a UK citizen domiciled in the US and collecting a state pension from the UK. For the last two years I have received my pension via ACH at no charge and deposited directly into my US bank account. Two months ago, the payment became a wire transfer, thus triggering a WT fee from my US Bank.

My local bank has reasonably explained to me that their fee simply reflects the way the money comes in. The UK State Pension Dept states they have not changed the way the pension is paid. As usual ' it's not our fault.' There appear to be middle men banks in this process and I'm sure that's where the issue lies and I know I am faced with an impenetrable fence in following up on this.

Has anybody, anywhere come across this issue?

Thanks.

lansbury

At a guess Citi Bank, who handle the payments for DWP have changed the way they send the money to your bank. Either that or your bank has changed something.

foynaven

Probably true but getting the Pension Center to fess up or further explore is blood out of a stone time. Pretty sure its an intermediary issue.

lansbury

It does seem strange that no-one else on BE has mentioned this. I know there are several regular posters who have their UK pension paid into a US bank. Mine is paid into my UK bank. If the Pension Center hasn't changed anything not sure where they could be much help. If it were me I would be asking my bank to show me this has changed to a wire transfer as a first step.

rochdalediva

Just double checked our incoming pension payment & it shows on the statement as "ACH Electronic Credit" but there's no incoming wire fee associated with it.

foynaven

Thanks all. Think somebody has screwed on this up but getting an admission is going to be a hard slog. Just found out the name of the ACH intermediary handling payment from Citi and am told that another intermediary, Deutsche Bank converted ACH deposit to wire transfer and triggered the fee.

Don't know all the ins and outs of this yet but beware.

Pulaski

Citibank doesn't have a relationship with every bank in America, so there are other intermediary "correspondent" banks in the chain that come into play directly where Citibank can't "hand over the funds" directly. Given that this change appears to be isolated (only affecting a few people), I would guess that it is the intermediary bank that has done something, perhaps accidental/ inadvertent, that has caused the pension credit to arrive as a wire, rather than an ACH.

ETA I just saw that you had discovered that for yourself. .... Your best bet is to ask your bank to lean on Deutsche because Deutsche doesn't know you from Adam, so is highly unlikely that Deutsche will engage with you. Whereas banks have people to investigate and correct wire errors and issues, and routinely contact their correspondent banks that send them wires and ACHs.