Millions of us send money around the world every year. Whether you are buying a property abroad, emigrating or sending money to friends and family, there are an abundance of reasons why you may need to make an international currency transfer.
When you’re considering transferring foreign currency, you would be forgiven for thinking your bank is the obvious choice. In fact, just over 80% of people still use their bank to send money overseas. However, banks don’t typically offer the most competitive exchange rates and can often charge high fees for making an international transfer. Furthermore, for larger transactions, it’s unlikely that your bank will provide a personal service or expert guidance around the often fast-paced foreign exchange market.
Thankfully, there is a convenient and cost-effective alternative. CNN has teamed up with foreign exchange experts, moneycorp, to provide you with CNN Money Transfers.
Competitive exchange rates and low fees
To make sure your money goes further, it’s important to get a highly competitive exchange rate. CNN Money Transfers offers exchange rates that are often up to3-4% better than a bank. On a large transfer for an overseas property purchase for example, this could mean a significant saving – up to $4,000 on a transfer of $100,000. That saving could help cover your legal fees or even pay for renovations to your new home.
Free online transfers
By using CNN Money Transfers rather than your bank, you could also save money on the transfer fees. Banks can often charge up to $30-$50 each time you move money abroad, whereas with the CNN service there are no fees for online transfers – if you’re making a monthly payment, you could save as much as $600 a year on transfer fees alone.
Personal Service
CNN Money Transfers assigns every customer a personal account manager, who will be on hand to provide market guidance and help you with your transfer.
Having access to a foreign exchange expert can be invaluable, especially for individuals buying property overseas. It’s likely you will have a fixed budget in mind and, when you find your property, a price will be agreed in a foreign currency. But during the time between agreeing a price and completing on your property, the exchange rate is likely to have changed.
“When you’re considering transferring foreign currency, you would be forgiven for thinking your bank is the obvious choice. In fact, just over 80% of people still use their bank to send money overseas.”
Your personal account manager can explain the specialist tools available to help protect you from negative rate movements, such as a ‘forward contract’. This allows you to fix an exchange rate for a period of up to 2 years. So, if you are happy with the rate now, you can secure it and not worry about the foreign exchange market hindering your purchase.
For Michael Hughes and his wife, this expert personal service offered by their account manager proved invaluable when sending the majority of their life savings to Denmark. Buying a property overseas for the first time can be very daunting and stressful, but having access to that specialist support removed any concerns Michael had. ‘Having sold our house we needed to transfer the funds overseas to make our dream of emigrating to Denmark a reality. Our account manager was a vital source of information throughout, answering all our questions in a professional and approachable manner. His guidance enabled us to obtain exchange rates that were more competitive than the banks, saving us money, and our funds always arrived in our Danish bank account swiftly and without any hassle.’
Online
In addition to speaking with your personal account manager over the phone, you will also be given access to a convenient online service. This enables you to buy or sell currency and make transfers 24/7, so you can manage your international payments at any time and from anywhere in the world. The system allows you to monitor the progress of your transactions and manage recipient details – making it simpler to make repeat transfers.
Security
When sending large amounts overseas, it’s important to be security conscious. CNN Money Transfers is run in partnership with moneycorp, which has been in the foreign exchange business since 1979. moneycorp is authorized and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority for the provision of payment services and customer funds are safeguarded in segregated client accounts. Last year it undertook 9.2m customer transactions and traded over $20bn in currency – so you can be sure that your money is in safe hands with the foreign exchange experts.