Hi guys, I worked in a couple of countries before moving to Hong Kong. I want to open a trading account here and use USD as my base currency. My savings are currently in SGD(mid 5 digits amount), AUD(mid 5 digits amount), NZD(lower 5 digits amount). I’d like to convert that all to USD as cheaply as possible. I have a multi-currency account here and the banks rates are horrible. I also looked at XE trade, OFX, and some others, and XE seems the best, but still expensive. Saxo also allows balance conversions but charges 0.5% if I didn’t read that wrong. Is it still possible to transfer money in different currencies into Interactive Brokers and use FXCONV to convert it? If not, do you know of any other affordable ways?
Have you looked at Oanda? You could make the base account in SGD, convert it to USD, put it into an USD sub-account and wire them out. IB can do this too.
@Shzshz with IB are you indeed able to transfer in SGD, AUD and NZD. You do not have to exchange these currencies during the transferring process. Once you have these cash positions in your IB account are you able to exchange these to USD. Whether opening an account at IB is the right decision depends on what you want to do with your money after you have exchanged it to USD. It depends on the kind of instruments you want to buy with your money and whether IB offers these instruments.
I haven’t looked at Oanda yet. Thanks for the tips so far! I want to trade Forex and buy some ETFs, so I believe it’s a fairly basic requirement and both brokers are able to accommodate these needs.
Are you sure that Oanda lets you invest in ETFs? I am not familiar with them, but don't see ETFs listed on their website.
You’re right. https://www.oanda.com/forex-trading/markets/live They have a couple of instruments, but ETFs are not included.
I use transferwise, they give you the interbank rate and charge a percentage fee that's disclosed. They also have the option for multicurrency accounts. They're set up to convert money, rather than be a broker or forex trading firm, so if that's what you're looking to do it's pretty fast and easy with them. I've converted over $1M in a number of transaction with them for my business over the past year with no issues.
I just tried and see that you are correct, learned something new. There is another company called CurrencyFair that's basically the same deal but doesn't accept U.S. customers so I haven't tried them, have you check them out yet? Alternately you could always set up an online USD account in the U.S. to accept the dollars, but I'd image that could be a pain in the ass if you're not a U.S. resident.