Wire Transfers

I work in the financial world and it's times like this that i hate as i have no clue.

I need a large chunk of sterling converted to $ and sent to my account in the US.

I have found out from the us that i have a $15.00 fee to accept the money.  I also read that there is a £30 fee to transfer from my UK bank

all that aside, what about the conversion rate? Where is that done? On the UK side?  I can't find anywhere about converting the money over.  They have info on ordering currency for travel but that is it. 

I'm clueless here!!!!  I wish i could send it directly to ING but i can't, as they only take US dollar transfers in the US.

Not sure this is what you need but I had it bookmarked. I am on their email list to have the daily exchange rates sent. I'm not a financial whiz, but want to keep an eye on the rate so if it changes for the better I can move quickly to transfer funds. Good luck!

http://www.hifx.co.uk/pservices/ 

court that is GREAT!!!!!!!  Have you used them yet?

Not yet. Can't remember how I found them but they sound like they know what they are doing. Right now I am trying to get my HSBC account set up and they are going to waive my fee for the first transfer. I will be looking into HIFX for subsequent transfers though, as HSBC charges $30. If you do use them, please let me know how it goes. My money is so scattered right now with the house being in escrow. 

I transfer money back to the US quite a bit.  HSBC has  system called World Pay - it's a bit slower, up to 5 days.  But it's only £9 to send the money.  On the reverse side, my bank sometimes charges a fee and sometimes doesn't.  They are really small and not used to wire transfer so I think they just forget sometimes, depending on who is processing the transfer.  The inbound fee is about $12.  

Ask you bank about options, they may have something cheaper than £30.

As for the exchange rate used.  HSBC uses the daily published rate they would for any other conversion on that day.  You could possibly be able to shop around and find some place a point or two better, but depending on the amount of money you are transferring, it won't make much difference.  $10 more for every additional point on £1000.  Just make sure your banks rate isn't way off what you see at other banks and online.

I use XE trade. www.xe.com I've used them several times now and never had a problem. Their exchange rate was MUCH better than the bank's rate and the only fee I have is the one that the UK bank charges me b/c the UK bank won't accept EFT transfers only wire transfers and there is a fee for that.

Thanks for the great tips Karin and Neeps! 

yeah thanks!

i really need to watch out and try and get the best points wise as possible, as this is part of our downpayment on a house and those points will matter.   

thank you!!!!!!!!

i was the reverse situation a few months ago when i needed to transfer $ to £ for the down payment on my UK house.  i was in a loss at what to do, as I usually just write a check in US dollars and deposit it in my UK bank.  It takes 2 weeks or so to clear and there's a fee from the UK bank.

After looking around for a reputable currency exchange company, I used this company: http://www.customhouse.com/ (their UK Branch)

I choose them for two reasons:

1- My sister used them to transfer $ to Canadian $.  She was happy with their service.
2- They had the most competitive buy/sell difference.  I called my US bank and asked them hypothetically if I were to transfer $50,000 today, what would the buy/sell difference be.  Using my US bank, I would have gotten less pounds.

However, it was one more step in the house buying process.  I had to first register with them, filling in a form and sending it back.  Then I had to wait until the exchange rate was ideal.  Next I transferred money from my US bank to their US bank, they then transferred the money to their UK bank, and finally into my UK bank.  The whole process took 2 working days.