Hi,

I'm a British student working in Geneva for the past year and I am due to go back to the UK for good in 2 weeks time. I have 5000 Swiss Francs in my bank which will need to be converted to GBP. Does anyone have any advice on the best way to maximise the amount of pounds I will get in return? Eg. Should I just use UBS for the transfer or....??

Thanks , Ben

withdraw it in cash (£)
you'll avoid any transfer fees - but the risk of having around £2000 in your pocket once you leave these shores is maybe something you don't want

UBS are being gimps and make me hand in my UBS card cos my branch is inside my work place and they have contract info.. so cant do that.

what about.....
making the withdrawal before handing-in the card?
or
going to the counter and closing the account and taking the money as £?

ask at your UBS. I'm sure they'll have a clue

A simple electronic transfer to blighty from UBS is probably best, no?

The rate is the Forex rate which is better than the bank note rate and as good as anywhere else

Yer this could be the case, just no one seemed to know if UBS was the best rate.. hence my post

You can check the cash rates of all banks from their websites and do a wholesale comparison at www.oanda.com/convert/classic

If you transfer the cash electronically the UK bank will charge about 7 quid to receive it if you dont send it in GBP.

I appreciate 1% is 20 quid but thats about the margin you'll save, whatever you choose, what's the hours of your time/mental health worth?

Hope this helps

Yes, pretty much.

Someone else posted some website (xe.com?) to send cash abroad a week or so ago.

The rate is fractionally lower than UBS, maybe GBP 9 better of over there for CHF 5000.
But: it takes up to 5 day not 3 hours...

Do you live in London?

That was me. I got an excellent rate, but they charged a fee for the wire transfer. £10 I think. Certainly CHF24.50

My transfer completed in about 24 hours. that was Credit Suisse to Barclays. Of course, YMMV.

With xe.com, the rate varies with the market, whereas the Interbank is (I think!) the median price from the previous day.

I've just compared xe.com with the interbank rate at http://www.oanda.com/. xe.com was £16 better over the deal, but once you subtract the transfer fee there's not a lot in it.

With xe.com you have to set up an account and they need to see documents, etc. Then they want to speak to you.

When you use the xe.com web site to set up a trade it's a bit unnerving as the page offers you a rate and there is a 30 second countdown. Especially when you're a bit drunk .

So what I think I've learned is that for xe.com to be well worth it, you need to be moving a lot of CHF and at the same time watch for the going exchange rate to move quite a lot in your favour versus the interbank rate.