Increase in bank transfer fees since the beginning of 2023 Thread poster: Neta L
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Neta L
United Kingdom
Local time: 12:09
English to Hebrew
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Hello everyone,
One of my clients, based in Israel, has been paying me by bank transfer for years. The payment is done in euro into my UK bank account, and for about 5 years my recipient fee was always 15 euros, deducted from the amount I received before it was converted to GBP.
When I received my first payment this year from that client, the amount deducted tripled to around 45 euros, and was even higher in the second payment at 51 euros. The payment was done from and ... See more Hello everyone,
One of my clients, based in Israel, has been paying me by bank transfer for years. The payment is done in euro into my UK bank account, and for about 5 years my recipient fee was always 15 euros, deducted from the amount I received before it was converted to GBP.
When I received my first payment this year from that client, the amount deducted tripled to around 45 euros, and was even higher in the second payment at 51 euros. The payment was done from and to the same bank accounts, in exactly the same way as before.
My bank said these are fees of correspondent (intermediary) banks, which they are instructed to deduct. They did say that the correspondent banks seem to have changed from December 22 to February 23.
My client's bank said they had no control over which correspondent banks are used for a transfer or how much they charge. None of the banks was able to provide any explanation as to what has changed this year compared to previous years.
This month I asked the client to pay into a European bank account through Wise, and the amount deducted was 28 euros which is better, but still almost double what it was last year.
Has anyone had a similar experience with international bank transfers this year? ▲ Collapse
| | | | Samuel Murray 
Netherlands
Local time: 13:09
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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Neta L wrote:
1. My bank said these are fees of correspondent (intermediary) banks, which they are instructed to deduct. ...
2. My client's bank said they had no control over which correspondent banks are used for a transfer or how much they charge.
Both these things are true.
It's possible that the head office of your bank or your client's bank have some sort of control over which correspondent bank to use, but even if that were the case, their decisions would not be based on "which is cheaper for the individual user" but other more global technical or operational reasons. The client's bank's head office have decided to start routing money via a different route (perhaps temporarily, to respond to conditions outside their control), and now the fees have changed. The local branch of a bank have zero control over whether or which correspondent banks is used.
One thing that you can do that usually solves this problem is to instruct your client to pay all the fees for the bank transfer. With international bank transfers (using SWIFT), the mode of transfer is usually SHA (shared), which means that both the sender and the recipient pays a portion of the fees. But even this doesn't always work, because the sender's bank may not know how many intermediary banks there are in the route between them and you, and each one charges a fee.
None of the banks was able to provide any explanation as to what has changed this year compared to previous years.
No, they would not be able to provide any explanation. Some guy in the bank's head office's IT department probably knows the answer, but no-one else does.
This month I asked the client to pay into a European bank account through Wise...
Wise also uses the SWIFT network for bank transfers, so the same principle apply: there may be intermediary banks that charge their own fees on the route from the client to you.
This is, unfortunately, a risk that translators take when they accept work from clients in countries that are geo-politically further away from them.
| | | | Laura Gentili
Italy
Local time: 13:09
Member (2003)
English to Italian
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| Transfers from Israel to Italy | May 5, 2023 |
Neta shalom,
Sorry to hear about these extremely high fees. I receive money every month from Israel and my Italian bank (one of the biggest banks) charges me 6 euros for receiving money from outside the SEPA area. The amount (rent) is approx. 800 euros. For higher amounts, the maximum they charged was 12 euros.
Have you tried to write to Wise? The amount they charge seems very high too!
I hope you will find a workaround!
Laura
| | | | Neta L
United Kingdom
Local time: 12:09
English to Hebrew
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thank you for the detailed reply. You're right, it's a price I have to expect to pay for working with clients far away. What I hadn't realised was that the fees can change so randomly. Because the fee was the same for years, my assumption was that there was a fixed fee policy for such transfers, so I was surprised it could increase by so much without any warning and without anyone being able to provide explanations.
My logic in trying a European bank account was that perhaps this wo... See more Thank you for the detailed reply. You're right, it's a price I have to expect to pay for working with clients far away. What I hadn't realised was that the fees can change so randomly. Because the fee was the same for years, my assumption was that there was a fixed fee policy for such transfers, so I was surprised it could increase by so much without any warning and without anyone being able to provide explanations.
My logic in trying a European bank account was that perhaps this would require fewer intermediaries, or eliminate any effect that Brexit might have had. It seems to have worked to some degree, because the fees were significantly lower, although with the addition of Wise's fees for transferring the money into my UK account, it ended up more or less the same as the bank transfers.
[Edited at 2023-05-05 12:56 GMT]
[Edited at 2023-05-05 12:57 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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Neta L
United Kingdom
Local time: 12:09
English to Hebrew
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Laura Gentili wrote:
Neta shalom,
Sorry to hear about these extremely high fees. I receive money every month from Israel and my Italian bank (one of the biggest banks) charges me 6 euros for receiving money from outside the SEPA area. The amount (rent) is approx. 800 euros. For higher amounts, the maximum they charged was 12 euros.
Have you tried to write to Wise? The amount they charge seems very high too!
I hope you will find a workaround!
Laura
Hi Laura,
Thanks for sharing your experience. My own bank actually charges a similar fee to yours (£5) for receiving payments coming from outside Europe.
The fees I was talking about are deducted by intermediaries, as the transfer is not sent directly from one bank to another, but through intermediary banks. I guess it's possible that in some transfer methods, or certain banks, intermediaries are not required or don't charge any fees.
Strangely, in the two times I had these high fees deducted, my own bank didn't charge anything at all, which is its policy for payments from Europe or the UK. Before, when the intermediary charge was just 15 euros, the bank charge came on top of that which I would expect for payments from Israel. Now, it's high intermediary fees and no fees from my bank, even though the sending bank is still outside Europe.
It's the same with Wise – they didn't charge anything for receiving the money, but the amount I received was the amount the client sent minus 28 euros, which intermediary banks deducted before the amount arrived at my Wise account.
[Edited at 2023-05-05 13:17 GMT]
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