Money exchangee wondered

[goji]

Use a specialist currency transfer outfit to move funds (I use SAT Worldwide) DO NOT use a UK high street bank, unless the amount is less than £1k.

Just to demonstrate why we should NOT use a UK high street bank, I transferred £4500 from the Nationwide to a bank in another ASEAN country last week. The first time I tried that method & probably the last. I wanted to move a modest sum.

There was a transaction fee of £20.
A 2.5% loss on the exchange rate.
Plus a fee to the receiving bank.
Total losses = 3.06%.

My losses for changing cash to that countries currency and manually paying in when I was there were 1.1% (thanks to google, I believe I may have used very competitive forex booths in that country).

My losses for changing cash to Thai baht at Superrich and paying into a Thai bank account were under 1%.


About a week earlier, I applied on line for a currency transfer service at one of the known forex specialists, but the on line application process fell over and some incomprehensible person from their call centre phoned me. I shall not be using them, but need to find one I can trust.

I believe money transferred by this type of company is not protected, however the FCA authorised transfer specialists are supposed to ring fence the money so no one takes it if they go bust mid transaction.