sending money to india from UK offshore a/c

my bank say they charge £35 to transfer money to an indian bank account! Does anyone have any tips on cheaper bank transfer rates? What's the best bank to have an account with in delhi?

apologies for the flood of questions - it's getting closer and closer!

cheers

dean

Opening an account in any of these banks would be recommended
https://www.bankofbarodauk.com
http://www.icicibank.co.uk/

I guess u can use Western Union to transfer money into bank accounts in India. I am sure that ICICI has tie-up with Western Union.

Dean can i ask u a question?
These are very basic issues, why does not the company u work for take care of all this stuff.

But your questions are most welcome at IM

cheers

many indian banks have correspondent banks in your country. If you obtain that information from the bank in India, you could just transfer the monies to their account with the correspondent bank with further instructions to transfer the monies to your account in India. It does take a day or two longer though.

i wish they did, they just don't. They just put up the relocation money and leave you to get on with it. apologies for the basic questions.

The service I use send money from the US is called cash2india.com. Possibly they handle remittances from the UK, if not, try doing a google search.
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I made good experiences with the citibank.
They don't charge account holders for getting cash on their ATMs worldwide.
Check their locations: http://www.citibank.com/locations
For a money transfer to India I paid 9EUR.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dean my bank say they charge £35 to transfer money to an indian bank account! Does anyone have any tips on cheaper bank transfer rates? What's the best bank to have an account with in delhi?

I feel for you.....In Jan I transferred Can $2000 from Royal Bank, Ontario to Bank of Baroda, Mumbai....the charge was Can$55 for wire transfer. It took 5 working days to get to me in Mumbai (an eternity!).

I found out later that using ATM machine is the best, the exchange rate is the same, and there is no bank charge (using your client card)....altho there is the question of your daily limit on withdrawals via ATM. But you can repeat the operations for 2 , 3 days if needed!!

Large sums are better transferred by wire, I think. It will take 5-6 days.

Talking to US citizens, they found ICICI, CITI banks good. I believe any of the big banks are all OK. Ask if you can tranfer pounds and leave them as pounds in your Indian bank account and exchange these for rupees as you need to. Our Indian bank account allows us to do this.

Why not try paypal.

www.paypal.com

Not a bad suggestion. You'd want to make sure that your paypal account was linked to your home bank account (or your Indian bank account, if you have one). Then you'd withdraw the money from the paypal account to your bank account, and access the funds with the ATM card.

Private services abound and they are swift. Its not just for Al Quaeda anymore..

dean - i have been transferring money from an offshore UK account to accounts in India.

Here is what I recommend. Open an account in India with a bank like ICICI Bank. Sign up for a service like Money2India. Money2India will allow you to transfer funds into the ICICI account in India without any charges. Then use the online bank transfer facility from your offshore account to transfer funds through the correspondent banks in the UK. You will get all the details on the relevant websites.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dean my bank say they charge £35 to transfer money to an indian bank account! Does anyone have any tips on cheaper bank transfer rates? What's the best bank to have an account with in delhi?

I just checked the ICICI bank facilities for transfer of funds from Canada to India - their website says, the service is free, no charges whatever. AND, they will transfer to any other bank in India (not just ICICI).
There is a very large list of banks they cover in India.

http://www.icicibank.com/pfsuser/ici...n/home_nri.htm

HOWEVER, check ICICI's exchange rate !!! Its substantially low compared to other banks. You will probably get a much much better value overall from your own bank even after taking into account the service cost of your own bank.

Quite a shock if you are going to do this regularly and fairly large amounts - I call Pounds 500 to 1000, or US$500 to $1000 monthly, a large sum.

Nothings for free!! As Green says, We are pulling for you, we are all in this together

Dean the other possibility is to look at internet banking and transfers and the costs charged. All the majors such as HSBC, Standard Chartered, Citibank etc have this faciltity. I have used HSBC in Hong Kong and Indonesia and have never had any problems with them. Not sure yet abuot there service here in Delhi as I have just opened an account.