Hi,

I want to transfer an initial 50 000 pounds from the UK to Switzerland, and thereafter about 500 pounds per month. Who is the cheapest to do this through? Thanks, Kevin

banking a cheque cost me 8 francs recently.

I read a post on here a few days back, and as a result contacted First Rate FX (www.firstratefx.com). I was asking for a rate to transfer CHF to GBP (appreciate you are going the other way) and they quoted me 2.4450 CHF to 1 GBP.

The other cost which I'm aware of, but haven't yet researched is that it will need a swift payment for me to get the CHF to London, but no transactional costs from the exchange company to my UK account.

Hope that helps.

I used my bank to transfer a large amount of money - but they charge 20 quid. It did arrive in about 2 days and there was no fee at this end.

However if I was in the UK and went to my local bank I could have moved over any amount of money around, but due to being in Switzerland I had to use the Bank's PhoneBank service and they had a 5K pounds daily tranfer limit which seemed a little crazy.

Ditto to the above.
Had to phone, and then fax through my signature and authorisation to the bank (Natwest) it then cost me 17 quid I think to transfer the lot across.

I transferred more than 5 grand as well.

Can cheques be cashed over here? and can you write a cheque for 50grand?

Yes, the UBS will take a cheque from a UK bank. If they know you they will credit the amount straight away.
I now transfer funds via American Express International Payments using the net. Unfortunately it is only available if you have a UK company but they will transfer any amount for £10 and you know what exchange rate you will get when you start the transaction. It takes 48 hours.

I transfered about 40K from UK to CH when i moved here, just gave Natwest my Swiss bank account details and they sent it over, cost was about £20-25
i move money the opposite way and costs CHF 18 per transaction, but remember it costs more with the exchange rate loss, as the pound is strong, check with the uk bank the difference between them sending the month in GBP or CHF,

Focus in this discussion seems to be on the transactional cost rather than the exchange rate - I would guess this would be relevant for the £500 monthly transactions Acto is talking about, but small fry for the large sum where £10-£20 cost is easily won/lost on a good/bad exchange rate.

I regurlarly use www.currenciesdirect.com . They are quite efficient and there is no cost from GBP 5,000. They will quote you a GBP/CHF rate which you will be able to negociate. The transfer is free of charge and takes two days.

For the intial transfer of the large sum of money, it might be a good idea to use xe.com for a good rate. I have never used it, but it was discussed on the following thread (about exhanging CH to UK):

Best way to change 5000CHF to GBP

Sorry for the unpretty link, but am not sure how to do it otherwise!

kfc.

PS. I now see it prettifies it for me automatically. How clever is that?!