Moving to UK - Have to move my Euro Savings to a UK Sterling Account

Required Field

I'm moving to the UK in September to do a Master's in Manchester. The course starts September 16th or so, and I'll have to have some or all of my tuition fees paid by then. I'll be funding it with my savings and redundancy from work, which are currently in my Irish Euro account. They won't accept payment from a non-UK account, so I'll need to set up the UK account in the next few weeks, and was just wondering if anyone had any recommendations for minimising the amount of charges/fees I'm going to end up paying for things like transferring money from my Irish Euro account to the UK Sterling account (and from there to the College) or any charges/fees I should be aware of? Basically I'm an absolute novice and clueless about non-Euro banking, so I'm just trying to find out what ways I should be aware of that the banks at either side of the Irish Sea will utilise to take chunks out of my savings just for the privilege of moving them from one account to another.

philboy

Hi,
I found lloyds tsb the easiest bank to setup an a/c with when I moved to the UK. I've moved home since but still work for a UK company. I transfer my wages with transfer wise, good rates and the charges aren't that high. Transfer what you need when you need it.

nogoodnamesleft

Required Field wrote: »

I'm moving to the UK in September to do a Master's in Manchester. The course starts September 16th or so, and I'll have to have some or all of my tuition fees paid by then. I'll be funding it with my savings and redundancy from work, which are currently in my Irish Euro account. They won't accept payment from a non-UK account, so I'll need to set up the UK account in the next few weeks, and was just wondering if anyone had any recommendations for minimising the amount of charges/fees I'm going to end up paying for things like transferring money from my Irish Euro account to the UK Sterling account (and from there to the College) or any charges/fees I should be aware of? Basically I'm an absolute novice and clueless about non-Euro banking, so I'm just trying to find out what ways I should be aware of that the banks at either side of the Irish Sea will utilise to take chunks out of my savings just for the privilege of moving them from one account to another.

Who is your Irish account with?

I was in a similar situation to yours a few years ago however I dont understand why you cant perform an international money transfer from your Irish account into your university account once you have the IBAN or a/c and sort code.

AIB charge 15 euro + what ever the rate is that particular day. My destination UK account usually charge 7 GBP off the transfer amount.

Why dont you pay part of the fees, get the necessary letters from the university to prove your a student to set up the account and then transfer what ever funds you need to keep your self going at a time the rates are in your favour?

MikeCork2009

I moved to the UK last year and frequently transfer funds between my Irish bank account and UK bank account using CurrencyFair (www.currencyfair.com). Rates are much better than you will get from the banks and the charges are much smaller - I pay a flat €3 on transfers to Ireland and £3 on transfers to UK. It's all very straightforward and easy to use too and one of the guys who set it up is Irish.

philboy

Mike, is the fee still only £3 or €3 no matter how much you transfer? I must take a look into it the next time I'm transferring money and compare the actual conversion rates with transferwise. Transferwise's fees have slowly increased since I started using them, but are still relatively cheap.