best way to move money

p.s she needs the HSBC passport account so she can wire a bit of money over to UK,plus have a bank account here because she has a job ready waiting for her,and they will want bank details,but trying to find out what she has to do when she arrives in UK,and what she has to provide ID wise for HSBC here in UK...cheers

You don't *need* a HSBC Passport account to wire money - she can sent money to anyone's account anywhere, including yours. However, wiring is expensive...

Why not go to the place where you have a bank account and ask them what she will need to open an account there? The requirements might be different for individual and joint, etc.

Andy

hi there,
As already mentioned, there's more to this than simply just 'moving' an amount between banks.

Once you've looked into those aspects - tax and fees etc etc, then one of the 'best ways to move money' internationally is to use a Currency Broker or Currency Exchange specialist. These places have access to better exhange rates than the banks and are well placed for when needing to move larger amounts of money internationally. They also offer other unique benefits such as 'rate lock' which is where you can agree an exchange rate and 'hold it' - then when it suits you it can be transferred at that 'held' rate, even if the currency exchange rate has gone down. Obviously, if it's gone up, you won't have the benefit of the better rate! There's many specialists here in the UK who do this, mentioned very frequently by the British people who buy properties abroad and want to transfer money out of the UK at the best rates. They will I'm sure, be able to work with those wishing to bring money INto the UK as well. Also, their fees are lower than the major high street banks too.

Have a search on google/yahoo for them and speak to a few to see what they can do for you. Use high street banks as a last resort as they're the most 'expensive' way of acheiveing this

Cheers, DtM! West London & Slough UK!

Just a note on the Bank of America -> Barclays thing. I went in to open a BOA account yesterday purely for this reason, but the "catch" is that yes, they don't charge you an ATM fee to withdraw money from a Barclays machine, but they do tack on a 4% "international transaction fee". So, depending on the amount of money you're withdrawing (anything above $100 or so), that can add up pretty quickly.

(FWIW, my local credit union does charge an ATM fee, but only a 1% add-on for international transactions, so that works out to be a lot cheaper. I think xe.com or similar sites would work out to be cheaper than that since you'd likely get a better exchange rate, as DtM mentioned above.)