Those who are accustomed to travelling across nations already know that performing financial transactions as switching funds from their national currency to a foreign currency may be not as simple as it looks.
As a matter of fact, when you have to transfer your funds you will have to deal with long and time consuming transfers, extremely high exchange rates and predatory fees, even if you do so with your main bank institute at home.
The current situation may seem odd, and for a good reason. One might think that in our current Digital Age, where an enormous amount of information and money (think to the stock market) can be sent instantly through the internet and other digital instruments, we still struggle with this operation.
There is a simple solution to overcome those issues: opening a multi currency account.
Pros of Opening a Multi-Currency Account
As we already mentioned in our intro, traditional banks are notorious for their predatory fees and disadvantageous conversion rate when dealing with cross-currency transactions. Every person who used a credit card in a foreign country or sent money for any reason to another region of the world, already knows what we are talking about.
On the other hand, if you open a multi-currency account you will not deal with such issues. Once you have opened a multi-currency bank, you will save a considerable amount of money due to their exchange rates and low fees required to do these operations. And it can save a lot of money and time if you deal with a high volume of transactions abroad.
For those interested in foreign markets it is basically mandatory to open a multi-currency account if they want a chance to start gaining profits. For example, with the recent Brexit, Britishers have incurred in many issues while dealing with the Eurozone, due to the fact that transferring funds from a Non-EU bank to an EU-bank is a slow and costly process which may take even weeks.
To put it in perspective, if you want to transfer funds from your main currency to a foreign currency supported from your multi currency account, the conversion will be completed in real time.
Our Top Choice for British Citizens
Among the many multi-currency accounts available for British citizens we choose to focus on FinecoBank as a provider of such services.
FinecoBank is an International financial institute founded in Milan in 1999, as a subsidiary of UniCredit focused on online brokerage and online retail services. Which made them a pioneer of this market and a powerhouse in the retail world. In 2014 they became a constituent of FTSE MIB, the blue chips index of the Borsa Italiana, the Italian Stock Exchange located in Milan. FinecoBank became independent from UniCredit in 2019.
They are regulated by top-tiers financial authorities in both EU and UK thanks to the following licenses:
- License from the Italian Companies and Exchange Commission (CONSOB): an Italian government authority in charge of regulating and overwatch the Italian securities market, including the aforementioned Borsa Italiana
- License from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA): a financial regulatory authority present in the United Kingdom which operates independently from the Government.
Regarding their offer in terms of multi-currency accounts, with FinecoBank you can choose the most convenient time to make a conversion from a currency to another by selecting the rate of exchange in place on the market at a given time. This operation is free of charge, there are no fees to cover and can be done completely online.
In your online profile you will have to enter the “Banking and Cards” area, select “Current Account”, then select “Currency Exchange”. Once you do that, insert the amount of money you want to convert in a target currency and click on “charge”. The summary will be available for 30 seconds so that you will be able to check the best moment to confirm the operation at the best exchange rate.
After the last confirmation, the exchange will be executed in real time and your portfolio updated.
