Sending Money to Australia

Sending it electronically is best because it is secure and your brother will get a rate as good as he will any other way.

Get your brother to shop for the best rate then send it electronically there.

then send the money direct to this account and he can sort himself out when he thinks exchange rate is favourable. Eric

He's barking mad, then. Sorry, but there it is. I can't think of many worse ways of doing it, short of sending the cash in a Jiffy bag. And I don't know if a UK bank cheque would be honoured in Australia, anyway.

Electronic transfer is by far the best way of sending it. It's not hideously expensive, you should get a good rate if it's a substantial amount of money, and in any case, he could end up on the wrong side of a slip in rates the longer he dithers about how to save a few AU$. And that's without considering lost interest.

Jon

It shouldn't be difficult for a UK bank to issue a bank draft drawn on a bank in Australia. That would seem to satisfy everyone's requirements, and should be comparable to the cost of an electronic transfer.

Chris

Try these guys:

Aris

Dunno about you, but I'd be nervous about using a Web site I'd never heard of before, in order to transfer oodles of money securely.

I see no evidence that they're regulated by any financial regulator, in the UK or abroad. That rings alarm bells for me. They're registered with the Inland Revenue as a Money Service Business, but this is basically an anti-laundering measure, AFAICT, not a regulatory feature.

They don't provide Head Office postal contact details, nor even a contact telephone number. You have to look very, very hard indeed to find the company registration number.

A site that says: "Its cheap!" followed by: "An e-mail will be sent [...] on it's completion" doesn't fill me with confidence. I'd expect a reputable, high quality, financial service at least to use apostrophes correctly.

I'm not saying they're dodgy, but there are certainly grounds (for me, anyway) to do due diligence before using them.

In any case, transfers are £10,000 per person per day, maximum. This may well not be sufficient for the OP's needs. And I'd suggest taking a long, hard look at their "Terms of Use" (link, bottom right of front page in small print).

Jon

As I said, i've not used them myself but here is a thread from an expat message board of people who have used them: