Bangkok Bank (London) GBP transfers - poor exchange rate!

[SooKee]

Have been using Transferwise up to now to send funds to LOS but, given that it seems some have had a problem with funds not showing up as international transfers (despite having their accounts tagged to get TW to use one of the 3 partner banks where that bank is the same as the customer's own account in LOS), I decided to try the first large transfer use Bangkok Bank (London) GBP transfer service.  I set it up a few months back but only ever used it twice for test transfers to make sure it was all working OK.

 

Sent £2,400 + £20 (their fee) from my UK bank to BKK Bank (London) and at the time I checked how much would have arrived in my account had I used TW.  Regardless of how they all calculate their fees, what matters is how much in baht you receive in total for the funds that leave your UK account.  In this case what it cost me to send £2,400 to Thailand using BKK Bank was £2,420 so that's the sum I checked with TW, after their fees, the total that would have arrived in Thailand was THB 90,189.  The rate they were quoting at the time was 37.62.  That was when the day rate was showing around 37.45.  Since sending the GBP via Bankgok Bank the rate has only got better, not worse.

 

Funds were credited to my account the next day and I expected the rate to be quite reasonable so was quite shocked to see that the amount credited to my account was just 89,170.  Given their fees this end are 0.25% (£6 on 2,400 or around 222 baht) that would have totalled 89,392 baht equating to a rate of just 37.2 which is pretty dismal.  I plan to go into the bank tomorrow and check that the sum they received in GBP was in fact £2,400 and that BKK Bank (London) didn't screw up. Also to check that there are no other fees that I might have missed.

 

If the bank here did receive and convert £2,400 this puts Bangkok Bank WELL below TW (to the tune of 1,000 baht) in terms of costs.  What with the £20 fee the London branch charges, the £6 fee this end and the 1,000 baht less (£26) you receive this end courtesy of their low exchange rate, at a total cost of £52, it makes Bangkok Bank London even more expensive than just using a standard SWIFT transfer from a UK bank, probably the most expensive of all the options.  Even if my own UK bank used an intermediary, the fees in total would be less than £52.  Of course, sending GBP you're always going to get the 0.25% charge that BKK Bank levies here but that isn't the major issue, it's their £20 fee (which on face value looks attractive) plus a dismal exchange rate.  You will also always get the exchange rate on the day at the bank this end but, out of all my trials, this has been the worst rate I've had.  It'll be interesting to see if the sending method varies whether the rate is just as poor.  It might also be that Bangkok Bank has a bad exchange rate generally.  Either way sending via Bangkok Bank this time cost me around £32 more than it would have cost me using TW.  Will try via my own bank next month.

Edited August 28, 2019 by SooKee

[The Fat Controller]

You didn't do your homework !

 

The relevant rate, TT, can be found here.

 

https://daytodaydata.net/

 

Letting a UK bank make the conversion PRIOR to sending will be even worse !

Edited August 28, 2019 by The Fat Controller
Added Info

[sniggie]

All banks give a worse exchange rate than Transferwise, that's the reason for TW's popularity. After having a TW transfer come into my Bangkok Bank as Smart rather than FTT a couple of months ago I used my UK bank to do a Swift transfer of 65k baht. At the same time I checked the TW rate.  The difference was 60GBP. Seems like your deal with Bangkok Bank wasn't such a bad deal. I am in the UK next month and might have a look at setting up a transfer from their London branch. From what you say it's a better deal than SWIFT with Natwest.

[SooKee]

Yeah. Sending GBP from the UK you'll always get both the recipient bank's fee plus their conversion rate. That can vary a bit depending on the bank, but not much. Then you have to factor in the potential for a UK bank to use an intermediary. All a bit of a mine field really. Of course, it never mattered before those using the income method for their extensions had to show this monthly audit trail of overseas transfers.

I only tried BKK Bank in case the costs worked out similar seeing as it removes the risk of ANY payment showing up as local. The costs though are far from similar so I'll probably stick with TW and just run the risk of having to do a repeat transfer in the event of one showing up as local.

The only other option I'll try next month is HSBC. Their flat rate TX rate is £4 which was great until a couple of years ago when some folks got hit with high Intermediary charges on top of the flat rate depending on who you bank with. I did read somewhere that HSBC said there had been some system problems causing this with old payee details not carrying over correctly to the new system. They advised people to delete old payees and enter the details again which would prevent such glitches and the use of Intermediary banks. How true that is I don't know. I'll see next month. But given that even if HSBC use an intermediary the costs won't be far off what Bangkok Bank cost, it's worth a shot.

The constant messing around sure does get tiresome!