Offers

The added extras

Specialist foreign currency firms offer extra facilities that can save customers cash. If the exchange rate looks fantastic now, but you’re not quite ready to buy your overseas property, for example, you can fix your transfer at today’s rates and leave the deal on hold for up to two years. So even if rates go dramatically against you over this period your deal will go through at the rate you picked today. All you have to do, normally, is deposit around 10 per cent of the transfer amount until your deal goes through.



You can fix decent exchange rates for regular payments as well and you can set up an alarm system so you get told when rates hit the point you want. Forward buying, spot deals, limit orders, stop loss – all these extra services bring a new raft of financial jargon and can seem hard to understand. But the specialist firms should be able to explain how it can all help – if the first one you try can’t then move on to another. Obviously it makes sense to take a look at a few of their websites first of all – see later. But most of the firms also have staff on the end of the phone who can give you no more information and no obligation quotes.