Hi all,

Ive had a look around, and could quite see a sticky post to high light this. I'll be moving to Zurich for work and i need to take some money to pay for things.

Questions:
1) Whats the overall process of doing this?
2) Whats the easiest way to do this? - any recommendations?
3) What sort of charges should i expect?
4) What sort of chargse would you say are reasonable? - anybody to avoid?
5) Any legal/Tax/restrictions I need to watch out for?

Ideally id just like to use my Barclays personal account and transfer money to a swiss bank using internet - but doesnt look as simple as that.

Cheers guys.

Barclays, aaahhh...... to answer your 4th question: Avoid Barclays!! I gave up using my account with that bank some time ago. The cost of each international transfer was costing me 30 pounds. From that point of view, it makes sense for you to do just one transfer. (I pay 12chf for each transfer internationally from Swiss post bank.)

Transferring from Barclays, I had to go into the bank in the UK, and fill out a form, taking three forms of identification ( with photographs) with me. It then still took over a week each time for the transfer to actually happen.

Opening a bank account with the Swiss post finance was easy and fast - needed proof of a Swiss address, plus passport.

The catch 22, was that I needed to have paid for my apartment rent and bond first. I did that by withdrawing money from my nonbarclay account via a bankomat. With a daily maximum withdrawl limit, that meant it took me 3 days to have enough cash and that I was apartment hunting with a big some of money in my pocket - a bit nervewracking till I was able to hand it over.

That was the only big initial expense.

I would suggest opening a Swiss bank account, which you're going to need in any case. Charges vary from one bank to another, so it may be worth shopping around. Opening an account is easy, basically you need to show ID (your passport), they may ask for your permit and if you haven't started working, they will want to see you work contract.
I would suggest you calculate what your needs for the first month are likely to be and transfer that in bulk in one go.

three questions:

1) How much?
2) Which currency?
3) What country are you transfering from?

He already told us.. Barclays = UK

OP it is not easy, depends on the timing of transfer. Money transfer is the only good way to do it and you do not have to send it via the bank, there are other FX outlets that can do it.

It is as simple as that unless you want to make it complicated

I don't think you can do international money transfer using Barclay online banking. Besides, Barclay last time "lost" my transaction for 10 days and they denied anything wrong at their end but it appeared 10 days later with no compension or explainion. The branch staff do not know how to do international money transfer unless you go to the really big branch. So do expect delay and frustration.

Opening account here is quick if you get all the right paperwork. However you will need to have permit first and employment contract or you can use the UK address but do bear in mind that each bank has different procedures and timing. If you work for a big employer, ask HR who their banker is and see whether you can use that bank as well. That will help a lot in opening the account.

Hi,
if you are not talking about really big amount (let's say up to 20k CHFs), why just not bring cash and deposit it on a bank?

The easiest way, although not necessarily the cheapest, is simply to wire the money from Barclays to your bank account in Switzerland. To do this, you'll need nothing more than the IBAN number for your account in Switzerland. I don't know whether you can do this online from Barclays or not, but you should certainly be able to do it over the telephone or in a branch.

A cheaper, but ever-so-slightly more complicated way, is to use a specialist currency broker. Many people on here, including me, recommend xe.com. You'll need to send in some paperwork to open an account, but once the account is opened actually executing the trades is very straightforward. You estabish the currency trade on XE's website. You send sterling funds to XE, and they send CHF to your account in Switzerland. Again, you'll need to know the IBAN number for your Swiss account.

The limit of taking hard cash out of UK is 10K GBP without declaration and I am not sure what the limit of incoming cash to CHF. With this straight new rule of money rule, if you cannot prove the money origination from, it can be confescated and the prove is on you to prove that is not so. Plus if there is any duff notes in the bundle, you lose the money as well and might even be detained by police; not to mention being robbed.

I would not recommend this method for large amount of cash at all.

Hmm. If you need the money just to survive the first few months, I would not even bother to transfer money. Just pay whatever you need with your UK account. Open the Swiss account, which you will need anyway to have your salary transferred to and to pay the rent. And as soon as you have received your salary you will be able to live on that.

So I would recommend to postpone large purchases like buying a house, car, or whatever, until you have received your first Swiss salary on your Swiss account. Hopefully, your new company has provided you with a temporary housing for 3 months, so that you can use these 3 months to save up for the deposit necessary when renting your own place.

If you need to pay a deposit now, just ask the IBAN/BIC numbers and transfer it directly from your UK account. Just my 0.02

About "just ask the IBAN/BIC numbers and transfer it directly from your UK account."

As several people have already posted "YOU CANNOT DO INTERNATIONAL MONEY TRANSFERS WITH BARCLAYS ONLINE BANKING"

Transferring money internationally from a Barclays account is a Stone Age process!
I transferred a large sum of money from a Swiss bank account to a Barclays account; did this online - the money was in the account on the same day.
Then what I needed the money for did not transpire & it took me months to move it back again.
Eventually I persuaded my Swiss bank to take a Barclays cheque; probably not the best value for money but certainly better than paying Barclays £30 for each chunk of money transferred - they wanted to split it into a number of chunks due to some internal rule about maximum values.

http://www.ukforex.co.uk

Ive used these guys for AUD --> GBP, should be jsut as easy for GBP --> CHF. You deposit the money into a local UK account, then the transfer comes to your OS bank from a local (swiss in your case) account - faster, and cheaper

I would also recommend PostFinance for the Swiss side of things. If you already have your Swiss employment contract in hand you can initially open a PostFinance account with your UK address too.

No way could I do this over the 'phone with Barclays. I had to go in with three different forms of ID (ie: I could not sue two bank cards that had a photo of me plus signature, only one) The form to fill out included aaddresses at both ends, plus bank street address, Iban, swift number, etc The teller had little idea on what was needed - I had to explain the procedure to her. I had a choice of two speeds for the transaction and chose the cheaper one of 30 pounds. Somehow the transaction went awol and it took over 2 weeks for the money to appear on my forwarded account. NO apology from Barclays. I choose to no longer bank with that bank.

Up to 20k in a pocket? You are kidding, aren't you?

I doubt it, why would he be kidding?

Tom

cause he will need to do a lot of paper like I said in an earlier post and he will lose a lot of it IF there is any duff notes in it. I don't think a sealed bag from the bank works either these day. They will just nick you for it.

I was in the same boat as the OP a couple of weeks ago and that's exactly what I did! I brought 11K CHF with me and opened a bank account ASAP when I got here. Once my account was open I deposited what was left of the cash (which wasn't very much after paying the deposit/rent and a trip to Ikea!).

I admit I was a little nervous carrying all this cash at first but I was careful and got used to it in the end!

Who would nick you and for what?