UGH, I hate my credit union. Too many hassles from them and yet too little time to do the due diligence on finding a replacement.
So here’s my latest problem. I want to wire some money to Hong Kong. The CU charges $25 for a foreign wire, but then tells me they can’t wire the money directly to HK and it needs to go through an intermediary bank. They claim they can’t find out who the intermediary bank is.
FWIW, the receiving bank in HK is HSBC, which I figured would make it easier since they do business here in the US, but after 30 minutes on the phone with them I’m still not even convinced they comprehend what I’m asking for.
So my questions:
-Are there multiple intermediaries that can be used?
-How much are they going to ask in exchange for their services?
-How would I find the specific intermediary bank if there’s only one?
-Am I supposed to trust this intermediary to forward the money along promptly? I have no relationship with them and apparently neither does my CU?
-Why would the charge extra for a “foreign wire” if they only send the wires to an intermediary and never actually make a foreign transfer themselves?
FWIW, I recently had to send some foreign wires to India through a national bank (National City Bank), and I was charged extra and had to give intermediary bank info as well.
The guy who I was sending the money to gave me all of the bank info, for both banks. The people at Nat City simply typed it in…even then it was sort of confusing as to which bank was which. I would not have expected them to know the intermediary info themselves.
I don’t know the answer to any of your questions, but your location says Los Angeles. The HSBC website says that they have five branches in LA, so why not go to one, perhaps with a cashier’s check, and ask them to do the wire transfer?
I had a similar problem when I worked at Merrill Lynch. The people assigned to take care of the accounts of mere employees couldn’t figure out how to do foreign transfers, with no more information than the person I needed to send money to said that others used all the time. Finally just sent it WU, and paid no more than I would have to ML. The recipient merely had to go to a WU office and could get the cash or equivalent instantly.
It’s over $20k, not very comfortable going the WU route.
From what I understand a friend did a wire to the same bank and did not require an intermediary. They went through BofA. So is it the domestic bank that determines if an intermediary is necessary? Google provides no help and the recipient in HK says no intermediary should be necessary
Well it turns out the problem lay with my CU, who elects not to be able to send funds to foreign institutions directly. The CU says the receiving bank has to provide the intermediary bank info, and the receiving bank says it’s not necessary to use an intermediary and they don’t have one.
Long story short, the CU did an offline wire, called it in to their processor, had to pay extra to their processor, and could not pass this cost on to me because it’s not outlined in the disclosures.
Frankly they are not adept at serving the needs of a growing business, which I already knew, and the DD on finding a new bank continues.
Hi. I manage around 10 international wires a week, so I have some experience with this.
Sometimes - depends on the receiving bank. Usually the receiving bank will specify who their intermediary is.
Usually around $20US IME.
Ask the recipient of the funds to ask their bank for the info. Usually, they’d just supply this, but perhaps they do not accept wires very often?
You are supposed to trust them. I’ve never had a problem with one directly (though often the recipient has not provided correct or complete info, so the funds bounce back).
The intermediary is in the destination country, not YOUR country, so your CU is doing “most” of the work.
