[dawn]

I was wondering if anyone uses an agent or if they just use their banks?

My bank wouldn't let me set up a standing order to my NZ bank account, well, not without charging me £25 for each transaction!!!

Is there an easier way to get my money into my NZ account?

TIA

Dawn

[Cardy]

Hello Dawn
we opened our accounts in Nz by electronic transfer it cost about 15 english pounds. We have kept our uk accounts open to pay bills and things till the house sells and just do them on the phone banking or the internet so we dont even need to speak to the bank. When our uk house sells we have already had the paperwork authorised by our banks in england so they can send the dosh in one go and then we will close them. We had to take our pasprts and some id in to the uk bank and have it all sanctioned but it didnt cost anything.I am working in NZ now so were just living on my wages here and not touching the english money. Also because the house in uk is empty i dont pay any water rates at all and dont have to pay any house rates for 6 months thats saving a bit on the running costs. Hope his helps .Cardy :D

[dawn]

It does help thanks, I was wondering more about getting the money to our NZ account from our UK account. We're keeping our UK accounts open for a while too and we have internet banking, so that'll be easy to keep using.

What I really want to do is set up a standing order to transfer a weekly amount out of the UK account into the NZ account. According to my bank, it's not just a straightforward standing order setup. So what other options are available to me?

Say I wanted to transfer £500 each week from my UK account to my NZ account. Should I build it up in my UK account and do it all in one go?

[jubjub]

You can use specialists such as HIFX, or xe.com

You could open an ASB account, they open a UK and a NZ based one you transfer into the UK one and the rest is done by ASB, easy peasy, HOWEVER ASB charge you £15 for each transfer under (i think) £30,000. So you would be better doing one big move and the rate is generally 0.02 under the bank exchange rate. but from what I understand they shut UK one after two years.

Other method is open a Nationwide Flexaccount and use your cashpoint card over here, its free and you get the bank exchange rate on that day.

[dawn]

£30k?? lol, I wish

I think I might check out HIFX, see if they can do it, otherwise, I'm just gonna keep spending! I need to get the money out of the country and away from my spendaholic hands!

Love the idea of Nationwide, will contact them - thanks!

[Hannah]

We used ASB and I would recommend this as a pain free easy way to transfer money. If you keep your original account open in UK you can always write a personal cheque to pay money into the ASB London account (thus avoiding electronic transfer charges from your original bank) whenever you need money sent across. Yes, there is a 15 pound charge but then all banks will try and charge something for sending money.

The forms we filled in to open the account were simple. We just posted them through and within a few days we had a letter from ASB confirming details of our London and NZ account. Simple.

ASB will also hold money for you, only transferring it when you request (e.g. because the exchange rate has improved). When we transferred money just before we arrived we were offered and exchange rate of 2.505 where as the post office were offering 2.39 at the time and Nationwide were offering 2.33.
The other benefit with ASB is you just activate your local account in New Zealand by taking in your passports and you get eftpos cards issued there and then. The biggest benefit for us was that you didn't have to have an NZ residential address to open the account (unlike many other banks) so good for people in temporary/holidaymaker accommodation. Your UK address is considered as acceptable for the purposes of opening the ASB account in the first place.

Sorry if this does not help those living in countries other than the UK. If you want to find out if your country has a transfer branch I'd suggest a web search on ASB.

[tee and dee]

Do migrants have to pay NZ Inland Revenue taxes of any kind when bringing in money e.g. from the sale of a house in the U.K. ?
tracey

[Delson]

Hi Dawn

I've got a Nationwide current account and credit card, which I always use when I'm abroad - best rates and no charges. You could open one, then set up a standing order from "your" account into the Nationwide account and withdraw from a cash machine in NZ - no charges and a good exchange rate. My friend works for them and now if you credit £1000.00 per month into it, you get an interest rate of 4.25% which is very good.

Sonia

[dawn]

Thanks for that Sonia, someone else suggested it too, so it must be worth having a look :D

[katandbob]

Rob used http://www.tranzfers.com/ to send our money for our rental, the rate is live, and the charge was a lot less than the banks £25!
so once the money was in the holding account, Rob sat watching the rate till it was at a good one, and then hit the submit button to get that rate...(I think he enjoyed the buzz of getting a good rate, and 15 seconds later it fell.....poor lads bored to death!)

( for small amounts, check out Western union - we paid the deposit in Feb/march with this $500 NZD which worked out at around £200 at the time and it cost us £7! and the rate wasn't bad either)

Kat...........

Ps thanks Delson, will tell Rob to look into the nationwide account :nice1

[Delson]

I've just paid a deposit for a Motor Home - $400 with my nationwide credit card, cost me £141.00, no other charges. Does anyone know if you hold a sterling account in NZ, do you get 7% interest on it?

Sonia

[dawn]

Kat,

Thanks, this is exactly what I was looking for £7 to transfer, no matter how much you transfer :D

I've just done my first one - woohoo.

Just a note Kat, can you PM me the email address you used with tranzfers as they have a refer a friend scheme and if I say you referred me, you can get a free iPod! Gotta be worth a go :D

Thanks!

Dawn

[dawn]

I've just paid a deposit for a Motor Home - $400 with my nationwide credit card, cost me £141.00, no other charges. Does anyone know if you hold a sterling account in NZ, do you get 7% interest on it?

Sonia

I saw a thread on this somewhere, I'll see if I can find it.

[Dozzer]

Hi all,

Is there a charge for sending money from NZ to Nationwide in the UK ?
We are thinking of sticking with our Nationwide Flexaccount and using the card over in NZ on a daily basis.

Regards,

Doz

[Smiler]

Hi Dozzer

If you mean transferring money from a NZ bank account to Nationwide Flex account, then yes. We have done it once with a lump sum and it was approx $25.

But there are no charges for using your Flexaccount switch or credit card here and although I have NZ accounts I have still kept my NW accounts open. It comes in handy for giving family money or ordering pressies online etc.

I just had a tax rebate too :cheers:cheers and rather than have the cheque sent here and pay currency conversions, IR sent it directly to my NW branch and it's kept the account topped up without transferring money from here again. NW sent me the paying in slip by airmail. :nice1

Nationwide also would send your statements here but I do it all online.

HTH

[dawn]

Hi all,

Is there a charge for sending money from NZ to Nationwide in the UK ?
We are thinking of sticking with our Nationwide Flexaccount and using the card over in NZ on a daily basis.

Regards,

Doz

Just remember that you'll get a lower exchange rate doing it that way.

[Emma]

We've used xe.com . They have a limit of 100,000 Can. Dollars a year. We like this service because you 'choose' your own exchange rate. If you see the exchange rate you like you inform xe.com that you want to transfer money. They give you 3 days to get the money to them and they used the exchange rate you wanted.

Hope this helps.

Emma

[treen74]

They give you 3 days to get the money to them and they used the exchange rate you wanted.

Erm 4 dollars to the pound please :clap

[Delson]

I'll have that as well, please!!

[Emma]

I'll have that as well, please!!

Ok, ok, What I meant was the rate you selected earlier from their website :D

Sorry to wake you from your dreams ;)

[dawn]

I just got 2.85 from tranzfers - pretty cool :D

[Turnbull]

Hi guys, just discovered that if you head over to Money Corp they will let you make money transfers for free, just make sure you type in NOTT when you register. My girlfriend signed up and she's really pleased with it.

[Avalon]

Not sure if its still relevant BUT:

Hifx do a service where you can set up regular payments from UK to NZ (or vise versa).

From UK -NZ:

The minumum amount is £500 per month
You form a contract for 6-18 months
The rate you get is fixed at the start of the contract.
So you know extactly how many $$$ you will be getting in your NZ account.
You set up a Direct Debit from your UK account to HIFX Uk account
Money hits your NZ account about 5 days later

NO CHARGES :) they make thier money on the rate only - not on the rate + charges.

From NZ - UK

same deal but the minimum is $1000 per month.

[Mr Brillo]

Have just read this, and some of the other posts on the same subject. Currencies Direct seem to always offer the best rate, free transfers over £5k and also do the monthly transfer thing like HiFX.

Anyone used them, as I don't seem to remember seeing them on posts?

they are quoting 3.035 ish at the mo.

[Aydon]

I used IMTS to transfer a large sum across - got 2.94 exchange rate and cost me $15 with National Bank of NZ. I thought about opening a Foreign Currency account here in NZ and then I could transfer across via the internet and "choose" when the exchange rate was the best to drop money into my NZ$ account. However, I decided that we just wanted everything here in one go so decide against it.

[sarahw]

For anyone doing 'small' transfers - i.e. $1000 or less you might want to consider using your cash-point card from the UK - if people send us money for Xmas/Birthdays/wedding we ask them to put it in our UK account - we then draw out on UK cash-point card which causes no charge & then pay the cash into our NZ bank a/c which again incurs no charge...

Another thing we used to do when we had cash in our UK account was buy stuff on our UK credit card here & pay it via telephone/internet from our UK account.

Just a thought for those of you who are doing the odd transaction rather than a regular weekly payment.