Transferring money overseas – a process that often leads to much head scratching and misinformation.

If you do have a decent chunk of spare change lying around – let’s call it R2 million because we’re thinking big – and are looking to invest it overseas, either as your investment allowance or as repatriation of funds, it helps to know what’s cracking.

If you have looked into it, using your bank for the process could cost you a total of at least R40 000.

Currencies Direct, who have been helping people with their overseas money transfers since 1996, gave us a breakdown of that amount:

If a SARS / EXCON application was required, this would cost you in the region of R2 500 for a simple application – however, this could be quite a lot higher if the matter was complicated.

You would require a SARS tax clearance, which the bank wouldn’t do, so that would mean your auditor / tax practitioner would need to do this, their fees could be anything from R5 000 right up to R35 000 for more complicated matters and could take around seven working days.

The South African bank would take a margin of upwards of 1.5% which on R2 million would be R30 000.

Additional fees and commissions would be around R2 000 depending on your bank and your status within the bank.

So, in total, you are looking at almost two weeks to finalise and a cost of minimum R40 000.

I am not sure I would be down for such long missions at such high costs – but luckily, there’s another way.

You see, Currencies Direct take matters into their own hands and do it for you:

We prepare all SARS tax applications and SARB / EXCON applications free of charge. We will submit and follow up till we receive the required approvals. This service is 100% complimentary and our turnaround times are usually three to five days at the most.

The bank fees for the SWIFT transaction is R375.

The margin we could offer is 0.5% or R10 000 on the exchange.

So in total, we are looking at most a week and only a cost of R10 000, 75% less than it would cost if you do it yourself through your bank.

The greatest part about Currencies Direct doing all the work is that they watch the rates for you, so they secure a rate at a time when the market is more favourable for you, offering even greater savings and more value for the exchange.

How’s that for easy peasy? It’s not often you hear of anything financial being so simple.