Transferring Money and Selecting a Bank Account (March 2018)

Transferring the Balance - Where to Find a Good Deal

 We hadn't adequately researched the options for transferring money at the point that we needed to pay the deposit (a little under 10% of the agreed price). Sally had spoken to both our bank (HSBC) and Foreign Exchange Direct (recommended by one of the Immobiliers in France) and was left, surprisingly, concluding that the bank would be the lower cost option.

 We went ahead with HSBC and ended up paying somewhere around 3.5% more than the Business Rate. Not too outrageous but I wasn't convinced that FED wouldn't have been cheaper.

 Today, Sally and I sat down together to doe more thorougher research - guided by https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/foreign-currency-exchange. Working through this and also guided my some earlier online research we drew up a shortlist of:
  • HSBC
  • Foreign Exchange Direct (FED)
  • XE
  • TransferWise (TW)
  • Currencies Direct (CD)
One of the key requirements was that anyone we went with was FCA Authorised - all of these were.

I'm sure there are many more providers we could look at but we were not wanting to find a reasonable rate with a bit of effort. We were not wanting to find the 'best' rate and spend hours doing so.

The next step was to see if we could find out the cost in Sterling (£) of transferring the balance on the house plus the notaire's fees in Euros (€). We were able to do this, there and then, online for XE and TW, HSBC required a phone call and for FED and CD we needed to 'request a quote' and, presumably, await a phone call.

HSBC, again surprisingly, came in at the lowest cost of the three checked today. They were a lot cheaper than XE but only £30 cheaper than TW. I'm still not convinced re the HSBC though, my wife was quoted their spot rate and I would be surprised if we got that. We'll call HSBC and check on the TW site at the time we do the real transaction - or may simply go with TW as I'm more confident that I know what we'll pay there. Of course, there is a chance CD or FED will come back with an winning rate - but I doubt it somehow (I was wrong, read below).

 A week after writing the above I called back CD and FED (both of whom had contacted me earlier in the week) and checked XE and TW online - all around the same time on the same day. The results were CD and FED were practically identical and TW was just a few pounds more. XE were more expensive by around £250 (on a transaction just over £45k). So, I'd suggest forget XE and take your pick from CD or Fed if you want to deal with a human being, or go with TW if you prefer to process things online. Personally, I'm going to wait until we're ready for the transfer and then check CD/FED/TW one last time - and probably try to negotiate an improved rate with CD and FED.

Finding a Bank

Paying for the house is the immediate priority, but it won't be that long before we need to be paying for utilities and the like - and that will require a French bank account.

Again we've done some research and have arrived at a short list of:
  • HSBC - our UK bank
  • Credit Agricole - have a branch in Uzerche (the town we're moving to) which, according to the Immobilier, has English speaking staff.
  • CA BritLine - a division of Credit Agricole that offers online Frrench banking targeted at the British living in France.
We listed out the questions we needed addressed which included understanding things such as:
  • Fees (as far as I can see all French banks charge)
  • How long it takes to set up the account
  • Whether a minimum balance is required (some banks require €10,000)
  • Whether there needs to be regular payments going in
  • Whether the account can be opened from within the UK
Have a think about what is important to you and which services you'll need to know the cost of.

We found many of the answers online (with the help of Google Translate in the case of Credit Agricole). We still need to call BritLine and HSBC to get some of the answers but, at present, my guess is we'll go with Britline.

Well, the calls were made anf the decision was easy - Britline looks to be just what we need (and HSBC needed a considerable opening balance and regular credits going in).

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