This is the kind of problem that people that move internationally have. A little while ago I began to receive most distributions and dividends from my Australian investments as cash payments rather than having them reinvested. Now I want to begin transferring them to the US. At the moment the distributions are accumulating in a money market account in Australia, so they are earning interest and the Australian Dollar so far continues to rise. My regular checking account in Australia allows online international wire transfers. Initially the limit for a transfer is set at zero and you need to phone the bank to raise the limit. Last night I phoned them and things were going well until the representative asked me for my Keycard number (this is an ATM card):
"Umm", I said, "I don't have one of those as they wouldn't send me a new one when the old one expired because I don't have an address in Australia."
The truth is that I didn't want to bother my friend there with having to send me a card which I wasn't really going to use at the time. I could have used his address. The representative then told me last night that I need to download a change of details form and send a fax including that, two copies of my signature and a photocopy from my passport. I couldn't find that form on the bank's website and so now e-mailed the bank to send me one electronically. Maybe I'll end up phoning again. But it looks like we can sort this out and begin transferring money bank to the US. I have done transfers from my bank here back to Australia. But to do them I needed to go into the branch, let them photocopy my passport etc. I even transferred money to China that way.
I'm just feeling a little worried this morning that if I move out of the US again I won't be able to get my hands on my money. This is an irrational fear because I will find a way. One option is HSBC's Premier Service. Seems you can set up accounts in multiple countries and then do online wire transfers between them. You need to have either $100k with HSBC or pay $50 a month. I doubt I'd have $100k with them any time soon as I like to have my money doing something more productive than sitting in bank deposits and savings accounts and I don't particularly want to set up a stockbroking/investment account with them. $600 a year is also quite a lot at this stage too for this service. At the moment I am likely to spend just $A88 a year with my Australian bank for transfers and $A60 to maintain the account and in the past I spent maybe $50-75 a year making transfers from here to Aus. But probably down the road I will eventually set up an international banking service of this sort to be sure I can get my money easily wherever I am.
Some people ask me why I maintain investments and accounts in Australia. There are three reasons:
1. I can't get the money out of my retirement accounts or transfer the accounts out of Australia until I am 60.
2. If I sell out my positions in regular accounts I'll owe capital gains tax.
3. From 2002 till now investing in Australia has been an extremely good move. The Australian Dollar has gone up and the Australian stock market has been very strong.
4 comments:
Australia is also good for investing, EWA has been performing very well thanks to BHP
I was going to suggest HSBC also but I see you have already did the research. They are the only global bank I know.
Probably any of the investment banks like UBS, Citibank etc. could give you banks accounts in the different countries which you can then transfer between. Though I'm not sure. I've dealt with both those two banks for my Mom but in each case we are just looking for offshore fund management. Whereas, what I need here are truly native accounts in each country which participate in the local fund transfer protocols, such as ACH in the US and BPAY/ANYPAY in Aus and which can then transfer between themselves internationally without having to appear somewhere in person to do the transaction or wait through long delays. It seems for wire transfers you have to originate the transaction at the sending bank - if you can originate the transaction at the receiving bank then there isn't much of a problem. I could then originate transactions here at HSBC where I am a usual lowly retail customer. Most of these banks seem to have three levels of service - one the usual local retail level, then a mass affluent category (for people in the $100k-$3million or so range, and then private banking above that.
Would something like e-gold work for you? It is meant for investing in PM bullion but does provide a means of sending money worldwide. It might make sense if you want to hold precious metals.
I'm not a user so can't vouch for it.
ML - my issue is sending money back to the US from brokerage accounts in other countries. A discount broker will usually transfer money to a bank account in the same country. Then it needs to be wired to the US. We'll see whether I can get that set up with my existing ban in Australia and if not I'll go to HSBC or someone to open an account in Australia. So that is moving up to the next rung in financial services. One that most PF bloggers are never dealing with or think is a waste of money :) But you only need to go there if the mass-market retail/discount services are reaching their limit.
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