The Daily Telegraph claim they have the best rates and lowest charges:

http://foreignexchange.telegraph.co.uk/

MoneyCorp was in quite a bit of trouble a couple of years ago.

I've heard it's also very cheap to do it by paypal but that it can take about 7 days overall.

I used OANDA recently to send some money back and it worked well. Got a decent exchange rate (they tell you the rate before yougo ahead).

Basically, it works like this:

1. Register with Oanda
2. Nominate a currency (CHF) and source account (my bank here in CH)
3. Nominate a target account (my bank in the UK)
4. Fund Oanda from the source
5. Exchange the currency and pay to the target in one step

I was happy once I got from (4) to (5) as I'd never used them before They do apear to be FSA (UK) registered.

I like that fact you can sit at step 5, clicking "exchange" and seeing the exact rate and only going ahead minutes/hours/days later when you're happy. Of course, until you transfer the money out it sits at Oanda doing nothing (for you).

Points to note:

1. Registering is complex as it appears to require two accounts - one for the funding and setting up accounts and one for the foreign exchange/transfer, although it kind of merges them.

2. Postfinance charged me 2 CHF to perform the SWIFT transfer to Oanda (in CHF, bank in London). Bargain! But the amount credited turned out to be 7 CHF less than I sent, so I assume Oanda's bank took that.

3. Oanda charge for the transfer. It's very transparent and I believe my charge came to around 20 CHF.

4. Once it told me the amount in GBP and I clicked "send", I got exactly that amount in my UK account (a day later). I was happy. It matched or beat (I forget) the XE.com rate I usually use to check.