Jbaker

We arrived in Brisbane in August. Got approved for mortgage in October based on a job offer letter. Conditional approval came about a week after I started work and before my partner had started (my job is permanent but hers is a contract role - they still took it into account) was subject to the bank seeing first payslips prior to settlement. Second tier lender, competitive but not market leading rate. Was pretty surprised by this but just different to the UK I guess where I doubt any lender would have touched us in a similar situation. Our situation sounds similar to yours - deposit 50% of the intended purchase price. We used a mortgage broker - may have worked without one, dunno, but seems more common to use a broker here than in the UK.

You can set up an AUD account with HSBC UK and then use Wise (or another fx payments provider) to transfer money from your GBP account to the AUD account. Then when you get to Oz you can open a current account with HSBC and transfer the money over. You can obviously set up a current account with any Australian bank but you will have to pay fees to transfer out of the UK AUD HSBC account to any non-HSBC account - I think it is AUD8 per transaction so only an issue if you’ve got a lot to transfer (transfer limits are £50k equivalent a day I think). HSBC did used to offer a migration support service where they would open up accounts in other countries to make it easier but this is only operating for specific countries at the moment - their excuse for that is COVID. I tried to use it recently and they just told me there was nothing they could do and that I should contact HSBC Australia to see if they could help.

Whoops

I am nearly at the end of a similar process. I set up an AUD account with HSBC in the UK and have been transferring the cash over in tranches on and off for the last few months whenever the real rate I can get is over 1.8 using fx payment services companies. I set up accounts with several of them so I could easily compare rates in close to real time and transfer using whichever was quoting the best rate on the day - CurrenciesDirect usually seems to be the best and moneycorp often seems to be the worst of the lot (eg. moneycorp currently quoting me 1.7604 and CurrenciesDirect 1.7747 although it is the weekend and the gap isn’t usually that wide on weekdays). Max you can do online is £25k with CD. If you’re going to transfer the lot in one go or in a few large tranches, I expect you can get them to quote slightly better rates if you phone them up and play them off against each other.

I uploaded two 888s both from Australia citizens. One from a friend I used to work with who moved home to Oz a few years back and the other from my brother-in-law’s wife. That proved to be sufficient.

Luckily I didn’t need one - think you only need one if you have lived in Oz for more than 12 months in the last 10 years? I’ve only ever lived in the UK so only needed a UK police check which was turned around in about a week (and my Aussie partner who is the visa sponsor has lived in the UK continuously for more than 10 years too so didn’t need an AFP check either, if that’s the angle?). I don’t think there are huge delays with Oz to UK post though - as the stuff my in laws send over for our kids still seems to get through in a fairly normal timescale.

So 309 visa has been granted, now thinking about the practicalities of moving money to Oz. We have a significant six figure sum having already sold our UK home in anticipation of this. I get the point about using a specialist fx money transfer company to get the best exchange rate but just wondering what others did in this situation. I’m happy to lock in at approx the current exchange rate (or at least get half done pretty much straightaway). The options seem to me to be: i) set up a AUD denominated account with a UK bank and then transfer the money into it, then just transfer the lot into an AUD account with an Australian bank shortly before we move - this seems safest I think and would allow me to manage fx risk by transferring into AUD progressively over time but doesn’t have the access issues of (ii) below. ii) open an AUD account with an Australian bank now and transfer the money into it now (seems the risk of this is that it might be difficult to access the money until we turn up in Australia and present ourselves at the bank - this is only a problem if we need it for unforseen circumstances like unexpected medical expenses but still makes me worry a bit) iii) enter into a forward contract with an fx transfer company - seems the risk of this is that I would need to make a margin payment to the company which I would lose in the event they went bust (so more risk than having it in a major bank which is less likely to go bust in a way which results in financial loss to retail investors). I could mitigate this risk by splitting up into say four forward contracts with different brokers. Still not sure I fancy it - presumably margin is at least 10%. iv) wait until just before we move and just transfer it all in one go into an Australian bank - don’t fancy taking that exchange rate risk given £ could take a significant hit from brexit. Anyway any thoughts / experiences welcome.

Applied mid-Jan 2020 and uploaded supporting evidence then. Got asked for medical/police check in mid Oct, visa granted last Thursday. So about the sort of best case scenario I was expecting in Jan when I applied- but nowhere near as bad as I thought it might be given the estimated timelines it was showing me earlier in the year.