Pension transfer

Darrel57 wrote on Wed Jun 21, 2023 10:39pm:

Hi all

Has anyone used WISE to receive pension payments from their UK bank accounts and then transferred on to their Spanish accounts

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If so does the origin appear as a normal Wise transfer or for example a DWP origin transfer 

Next question is if DWP makes the transfer into a Spanish acct is the exchange rate low and how long does the transfer take to reflect into your acct 

Sorry for the long winded question 

Thank you 

Darrel 

tebo53 wrote on Wed Jun 21, 2023 10:45pm:

Hi,

I used Wise to transfer my uk pension payment from a Barclays account in the UK to Sabadell in Spain.  All very easily done with minutes. There is a description box on the transfer details where you can describe the payment,  I.e. Pension.

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The UK government will put your pension directly in a Spanish account at a good exchange rate and is usually in your account within the arranged dates.

Steve 

marcliff wrote on Wed Jun 21, 2023 11:08pm:

First one with Wise I have no idea. However, some banks allow free banking if you have a pension transferred across (along with a couple of other stipulations) and Caixa is only 300 euro. If Wise transfers it then it may not show as a pension payment,

The DWP uses a US bank (World bank? Something like that). Your state pension will be paid on the same day it is due and the exchange rate will be one of the highest as they transfer so much they get the top rate. They make no charge for doing this....

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Crown pensions are different and they charge a couple of quid for doing it and you will receive it 2 working days after the due date.

Darro wrote on Thu Jun 22, 2023 2:53am:

You'll be better off having your pension paid directly into a Spanish bank, that way you get the interbank rate and not the rate your bank uses which, at any given moment, can only ever be poorer.

Wise is a good alternative but will still not beat it as they do make small charges for currency conversions.
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As overseas pensions are paid via the US they can occasionally be a couple of days late if there is a bank holiday there. Equally they can also come a day or two early but in either case the rate is nothing at all to do with how much is being transferred. For example my latest payment on June 9th came through within a cats whisker of the ECB rate for that day.

Sitting on it in UK hoping for a better rate is a mugs game in which any minor gains you might realise on one transaction are highly likely to be wiped out the next time so on average you will never win anything meaningful.

As a wise man once said, there are two ideal times to make currency transfers - those being yesterday and tomorrow!

I'm with Caixa BTW an with two state pensions going in each month I pay not 1c for my banking. On my statement they appear as Pension / Insurance. I have no other products with them and never have had.

Stevec2x wrote on Thu Jun 22, 2023 11:25am:

Hi

My situation is slightly different in that I have a personal pension from Scottish Widows, but I'm not old enough for the state pension.

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SW pay my pension directly into my Wise GBP account, using the Wise GB IBAN. I then use Wise to convert to Euros as and when needed. I then use my Wise physical/virtual debit card and direct debit facility to pay for almost everything.

I would imagine that the DWP will have no problem paying into a Wise account.

I do not have a Spanish bank account, but I've been trying to open a free online account with Cajamar/Wefferent because at some point I expect to have to pay some income tax, which can't be done using Wise. But the Cajamar server breaks every time I try!

Cheers

Steve