One of the objectives with zencapita is building wealth, and that also means not losing it to the pirates, predators and politicians….
Put another way, a penny saved is a penny earned. The other day, I was trying to transfer funds from my local account, to an offshore account. And instead of doing it online via the banks’ net banking facility – I decided to opt for a transfer via the branch. That meant physically visiting the branch, and filling up a form, signing it and giving to the managers there to execute the trade.
Well, it so happened that I gave and I would get the quote only the next day morning. I waited for a few hours and just before noon, the representative calls me with the quote. For a second, I was a bit surprised, wasn’t it supposed to be better than the net banking rates. Or even close to the rates on XE.com which follows the interbank rate?
Well, no in this case, the bank quoted a rate that was 2.3% higher than that on xe.com – and when I raised that this rate was pretty high and asked for revision, they came back with a rate that was 1.5% higher than the xe.com
This got me furious, so I called up one of my banker friends from another bank where I don’t have an account, he told me that the rate was high and that banks would normally charge 0.5% to 0.75%. The higher limit usually applies for exotic currencies, that weren’t regularly traded. So basically, this rate was DOUBLE that of the normal practice!
All said and done, I asked the rep to get back with a better rate, even better let me talk to the trading desk, and armed with this insight, negotiate with them to provide a standard rate of 0.5% instead. And to confirm that I’m ok with that rate no matter what the price.
But lo and behold, the bank doesn’t operate on the weekends, we’re talking about forex markets which are 24 hours a day markets, not stocks!
No wonder blockchain and cryptocurrencies are gaining popularity – you’re not slave to this archaic system.
Well, what can you learn from all this? Banks are ripping you off. They’re in the business of making money, from your money. Negotiate a lower rate when transferring funds, the typical being 0.5% to max 0.75%. And as someone else suggested to me, use a brokerage and covert through them – as they’re dealing in currencies nearly every day.
The more I see this kinda of rip off practice, the more frustrated I get with the banking system – the more I see their demise coming of age. Why do you need to pay them so much for so little value?
Winter is coming.