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[khman]

Hi,

I do have now a Kasikorn account. I send EUR to this THB account.
Each time I have quite a lot of fees.

Most of the fees are conversion fees, and they are far away from good rates such as official exchange or SuperRich.

Plus I have some receiving fees, 200 to 500THB, plus 10THB per 10 000THB, ... and so on.

I was looking for a bank more competitive regarding international wire transfers. Do you have any advise?

Please note I only have a student (1 year) visa.

Thanks

[Pib]

Thai banks, including K-bank provide the TT Buying Rate for incoming "foreign" funds. The TT Buying Rate offered by Thai varies very little between the banks. I just took a look at this foreign currency exchange webpage and the Percentage difference between minimum and maximum exchange rates or the listed Thai banks was only 0.16%. The Average bank TT Buying exchange rate was 1 EUR = 38.4397333 THB, with K bank's TT Buying Rate being 38.429. If going to Superrich with your money belt to exchange the notes you would have got 38.6 baht per Euro. So, you can see the TT Buying Rate for wire transfers is real close, just shy of the "carry a bunch of cash from your home country to exchange at Superrich."

I sure hope when you wire money over you are NOT allowing/authorizing your Sending bank to convert to baht before sending...if you are then you are probably getting around a 1-4% lower exchange rate from your home country sending bank in comparison to the TT Buying Rate provided by Thai banks. If you were doing this you might have thought the receiving Thai bank was giving you a crappy rate when in fact it was your home country Sending bank. And to top it off, when the funds arrive K-bank they are still probably going to charge the funds "receipt/conversion" fee....sure they didn't have to convert to Thai baht but they did have to receive the funds...you still get hit with the receipt/conversion fee. All Thai banks charge a funds receipt/conversion fee in the 200-500 baht ballpark, unless, you choose a sending method which allows the Sending bank to instead pay a fee to the Thai receiving bank to receive the funds, but this is more expensive than just the straight 200-500 baht Thai bank fee. Banks sure can "fee" you to death sometimes...international funds transfers are cash cows for some banks--especially Sending banks.

Now, with all Thai banks except one (Bangkok Bank) you have to use the generally pricey SWIFT transfer method...a SWIFT fee charged by the Sending bank. However, since Bangkok Bank has some foreign operations in locations like New York and London a person can use a much lower cost transfer method like ACH (for the US) and BACS (for the UK...see this Bangkok Bank webpage for more info).

[khman]

Hello,
Thanks for your detailed answer. I appreciate.

I will have the detail from K-bank soon and I will tell you.

But yes, I sent euros, so K-Bank handled conversion.

Last time I checked, there were some fees... 200 to 500 THB depending of amount, and 10 thb per 10 000thb, but most of the fees was the conversion rate. I compared official EURTHB ( http://www.investing.com/currencies/eur-thb ) with the applied rate. There was some difference, about the same as exchanging euros in the street, and not at SuperRich. Which is not competitive, as you know.

I will tell you more details soon.

Thank you !

[Pib]

Don't know if I would try comparing FX Trading rates to bank exchange rates. Sure, the FX Trading rates may be a little better but you need to send your money to Thailand, which most likely means sending it to a Thai bank where you will receive the TT Buying Rate. But if you can figure out how to get FX Trading rates without any fees and get the money sent to Thailand with no additional fees then go for it. Seriously, good luck.

[Gerald14]

I usually transfer AUD to Kasikorn and get pretty much the advertised TT rate on the day. No fees are charged as far as I know

[Donnie Brasco]

I use the Siam Commercial Bank (Thai Panit) for most transfers.

They (and most others, upon request) will hold it for 360 days or until you want to lock it in at a rate.

This time, the foreign exchange people told me to sit tight for about an hour before they transferred it into my Thai account as it was going up. I had to pay the sending bank a $50 flat fee but I got the best rate possible.

Once it's here, use it or slip it into an interest bearing account for safekeeping.

Funny things can happen here to foreign bank deposits and the recourse is preposterously complicated.

[khman]

Thanks all for the infos.

Still not have the breakdown. I will.

In the meanwhile here are the exact K-Bank fees. Nothing excessive, but still I think conversion rate is the problem. I think they use what they offer in the street as exchange rate, which is not competitive.

Also as you can see there is some vague correspondant fees...

According to your enquiry about your email, we would like to inform you that to transfer funds from overseas, the correspondent bank will charge the sender of funds; the charge rate will depend on the conditions of the correspondent bank. The beneficiary will also be charged by Kbank on the rate of 0.25% of the transferred amount (minimum 200 baht and maximum 500 baht) Please note that, if you transfer to the account that already existing, the currency will be changed into Thai baht automatically.

In addition, to transfer to branches outside Bangkok and vicinity, there will be additional fees, which are leased line fee of 20 baht per transaction, and 10 baht for each 10,000 baht transferred (minimum 10 baht and maximum 750 baht).

[khman]

Hello,

I got the details... For those interested...

As I plan to transfer much more I would like to understand...

I withdrawed 2000 euros from an Australian bank which took 20AUD fee, so say 15EUR

1985EUR were sent

1969EUR (so 16EUR disappeared... intermediate bank?) arrived at Kasikorn

On 27 may, Kasikorn converted these 1969eur @38.4425 which gave 75693.28THB

I wonder where this 38.44 comes from, seems rate was higher on 27 may ( http://www.exchangerates.org.uk/EUR-THB-exchange-rate-history.html ) ...

Then I had 200THB fees for "inward commission"

Then I had 80THB fees for "Domestic fee transfer"

Then I had 20THB fees for "Lease line charges"

My main concern in fact is the exchange rate. Do they use the official one? Do they make margin on it...? How cloudy...

[Pib]

Hello,

I got the details### For those interested###

As I plan to transfer much more I would like to understand###

I withdrawed 2000 euros from an Australian bank which took 20AUD fee, so say 15EUR

1985EUR were sent

1969EUR #so 16EUR disappeared### intermediate bank?# arrived at Kasikorn

On 27 may, Kasikorn converted these 1969eur @38#4425 which gave 75693#28THB

I wonder where this 38#44 comes from, seems rate was higher on 27 may # http://www#exchangerates#org#uk/EUR-THB-exchange-rate-history#html # ###

Then I had 200THB fees for "inward commission"

Then I had 80THB fees for "Domestic fee transfer"

Then I had 20THB fees for "Lease line charges"

My main concern in fact is the exchange rate# Do they use the official one? Do they make margin on it...? How cloudy...

Didn't know there was such a thing as a "official exchange rate." The rates listed at above website sure don't represent that elusive official web site. What they do represent is something called the "mid market rate" which according to the website is defined as: "The rates in our free information services are neither "buy" nor "sell" rates. Instead, they are mid-market rates derived from the mid-point between the "buy" and "sell" rates from global currency markets. Our free information services always list the mid-market rate because it indicates the value of a currency that is not weighted towards buying or selling. "Buy" and "sell" rates include overheads and profit margins that are independently set by foreign exchange providers; their rates can vary a lot and will differ from the mid-market rate, so we recommend you shop around."

Basically these mid point rates are at the FX Trading/wholesale level...BIG, BIG amounts of currencies being traded. Then you have Thai banks like K-bank who buy currencies from these wholesalers and K-bank needs to make it's own profit so it applies a margin/profit. You will find that all Thai banks TT Buying Rate used for conversion of incoming wire funds is real close...usually only a few tenths of a percentage point apart. You can use this web site to see a summary of Thai bank interbank exchange rates...be sure to set the Currency Type to "TT" to reflect the rate given for incoming wire transfers. Link

[khman]

Thank you Pib.
What matters is they are cristal clear with me.

But they are not IMO. I'd prefer them to say "we convert using x% above official rates".

Do you mean, if I go to any other bank, fees would be about the same, overall?
Thanks!

[Pib]

Do you mean, if I go to any other bank, fees would be about the same, overall?

For Thai banks the core/basic funds receiving/conversion fee is in the 0.25% (Bt200 min, Bt500 max) ballpark...now that fee can be avoided (usually in exchange for a higher fee) by the way you choose to transmit the funds. Some banks over the option of the Sender paying all transfer costs (even the 0.25% receipt fee is reflected back to the Sender in a separate, usually higher charge), the receiver to bear all charges, or the charges to be shared between the sender and receiver. Most bank systems default to the shared method, but some banks do offer the other methods.

And Thai bank TT Buying Rate exchange rates are always pretty close to each other, especially the major banks like Bangkok Bank, K-Bank, and SCB that it seems most farangs end up using. I just looked at the link I mentioned earlier regarding exchange rates for Thai banks and for the 3 banks I just mentioned they had Euro rates of 39.685, 39.695, and 39.73, listed respectively, only a 0.045 baht difference at this moment in time. Additionally, it seems Thai banks inter-regional fees are all the in same ballpark also....that is, XX baht per 10,000 baht transferred. Sure Thai bank fees and exchange rates are going to vary a little--but not much. I my opinion there is not much banking competition in Thailand, and combined with Bank of Thailand regulations which all Thai banks must follow, it seems policies and rates are very similar between the banks.

But what I've seen in posts, like your #8 post above listed, i'ts usually "Sending and Intermediary" bank fees that hurt and can vary very significantly and be high, and the Intermediary bank fee bothers folks not just because it was a fee but because it was possibly an unexpected fee and is usually had to breakout from other fees applied along the money's journey.

Usually, the only way to reduce the total amount of transfer fees from the starting point (the Sending bank) to the end point (your local Thai bank account) is to figure out how to reduce the Sending and Intermediary bank fees--and that is probably going to require changing your home country bank to one that has free/low cost outbound transfers without any intermediary bank involvement/fees. Just for example, like for U.S. folks you'll see many posts where people have Bangkok Bank accounts and since free/low cost ACH transfer are available at most U.S. banks, by having a Bankgok Bank account and being able to route funds through the Bangkok Bank New York branch it provides a big savings on the typical SWIFT transfer which usually has a pricey sending fee. No intermediary banks are involved either. Now Bangkok Bank NY still slices off a small fee as the funds flow through them onto the local Bangkok Bank account, but it's much lower than using a SWIFT transfer....once again, this is just an example of reducing fee costs on the Sending end.

Feedback from folks with Oz bank accounts should be you best source for Sending bank fee costs, but I know I'm preaching to the choir, be sure to scrutinize that info from posters because I see so, so many posts where people really don't have a clue (or maybe care) about "all" the fees along the way....it seems some folks assume that since their Sending bank did not charge any fee then there were no other fees along the way, not even at the receiving bank....but in fact there can be middleman/intermediary bank fees and Thai banks definitely have their funds 0.25% (Bt200 min, Bt 500 max) receiving/conversion fee. Or the posters will leave out important facts regarding the transfer. However, based on your post it very obvious you closely evaluated/rooted out the various fees---good on you and good luck in finding a cheaper transfer method (which is probably going to require a different Oz bank account).

[khman]

Ok, thanks for the reply again. What I don't like is they say "0.25% fees min 200 max 500". But they already marked up the exchange rate...

Anyway I see there is no real other solution.

I can't change Oz bank as it is my broker. I am not Aussie btw.

I've heard of "SHA", yes...

Thank you very much.