Singapore Expats

Hello all,

I am planning to make a trip back to Singapore and close out all my bank accounts.
Looking to transfer around SGD 400,000 to the UK in GBP.

Can someone recommend the best service to transfer money back to the UK? I have a Citibank account at both ends but fear they will not provide the best conversion rates.

That is a lot of money to move in one shot. Sold your condo izzit? If you are coming to Singapore, you should go to the bank and speak to a relationship manager and get a quote. DBS does this and you will get a better rate, if the amount is huge. Some people on this forum have suggested online FX brokers. May be worth trying. Look for those threads.

Wd40 wrote:That is a lot of money to move in one shot. Sold your condo izzit? If you are coming to Singapore, you should go to the bank and speak to a relationship manager and get a quote. DBS does this and you will get a better rate, if the amount is huge. Some people on this forum have suggested online FX brokers. May be worth trying. Look for those threads.

Yep Wd40, decided to put that down as a downpayment and get a large house with a garden et al in London Even though it will be bit father than the Zone 1 life I am used to atleast it should give me a good place to live in.

Hoping to come to Citibank and talk to a RM, I used to be a Citigold customer for years so hoping they will look into it.

What about you, are you still in Singapore or moved to UK as you were considering last year?

faelle, you know Wd40.... believes in NATO.

NATO as in no action talk only? yeah you are right, I wont initiate that move until it becomes unviable to live here. Yes Faelle, still on the sunny island.

Citibank used to have some arrangement IIRC, where if you were a 'premium' customer of some sort, you could do international FX conversions/transfers with very minimal fees. I don't know if that still exists, as I'm not with Citibank, and I've not seen it mentioned here for a long time.

As suggested above, the topic did get a pretty thorough discussion some time ago. Including (IIRC) suggestions for online brokers and so on. [Maybe try searching here on 'Caxton FX', which is one name that comes to mind. There are several others, but that might bring up the topic].

If you do speak to Citibank then I'd ask them for their rates/fees. Not just a 'representative rate' (as some bank here has previously produced for me). Actual rates/fees for if you were doing the transaction right now*. So that's the conversion rate, the wire fee, any correspondent bank fee. That much they can surely provide you with, especially with the decent size you have in mind. There also might be a 'bank receipt fee' on the UK end, though that fee seems to be a thing that SGn banks levy for receipts here. In any case the latter is minimal within the scheme of things, (though still enough for a good lunch out back 'ome!). Essentially you should seek to flush out all and any charges and fees. An actual FX rate and it's spread is the big one. The spread tells you what they scalping from the rate. You change cash at Mustaffa or The Arcade and the spread might be say 0.1%. A bank can quite possibly not readily disclose to you that their conversion rates have perhaps a 2% spread. That can really add up when you're talking 'size'.

p.s. Don't forget right before you fly to take the max in cash (if you are ok with that). The no-questions-asked limit at UK borders is £10k IIRC. That can be deposited locally and provide immediate liquidity.

* You can then compare this versus the live market price.

Citi premier or gold customer should give you a better access point. If you still have your Citi GBP account here, that's even better no SWIFT charges and no fax exposure

Spread on citibank tends to be 1%-1.3% whenever I use it. For small frequent amounts (A few thousand here or there) it's better than a real wire to the US. For anything larger, I'd look at doing something else.

This is Citi Global Transfer. Not sure if CitiGold has a better option.

I am going to try get in touch with the Singapore Citibank guys who helped me open my SGD and GBP account in UK.
Hopefully they can give me close spot rate + transfer fee.

Appreciate any other advise people can give including possible predictions on SGD appreciation or depreciation trends in near future as compared to GBP.

FaeLLe wrote: Appreciate any other advise people can give including possible predictions on SGD appreciation or depreciation trends in near future as compared to GBP.

I think the Sterling is on a stronger footing than the Sing Dollar. Although I dont expect much of relative movement between the two in the short term.

Check out fx brokers. I used to use HiFX and they always had better rates than Citibank. May not make such a difference with the amount you are sending though.

So I got in touch with Citi Personal Banker who was happy to help me out.

They actually gave me a very competitive rate (almost close to spot rate) and diversified it into USD and GBP for transfer to various destinations.

Also making use of Citibank for the transfer helped reassure me that I was not at any risk of using any money transfer brokers or intermediates (that I did not trust too much).

Hope this post helps others in future!

Some money changers can provide currency conversion plus remittance services. Money changers generally get better rates than banks. You might want to try them.

If you are remitting the funds to your London Citi account, make sure you retain your withdrawal slips and instructions to money changers. The bank will definitely ask for it later.

Girl_Next_Door wrote:Some money changers can provide currency conversion plus remittance services. Money changers generally get better rates than banks. You might want to try them.

If you are remitting the funds to your London Citi account, make sure you retain your withdrawal slips and instructions to money changers. The bank will definitely ask for it later.

Even though it is Singapore I would not feel comfortable walking around with almost half a million $ in cash!

FaeLLe wrote:

Girl_Next_Door wrote:Some money changers can provide currency conversion plus remittance services. Money changers generally get better rates than banks. You might want to try them.

If you are remitting the funds to your London Citi account, make sure you retain your withdrawal slips and instructions to money changers. The bank will definitely ask for it later.

Even though it is Singapore I would not feel comfortable walking around with almost half a million $ in cash!

With some money changers, you can wire the money to their Singapore account and they will wire the money to your UK account. You just need to agree on the rates before you send the money to them.