We will have a sterling cheque of approx 20k coming in every month for the next 5/6 months. apart from ringing up the bank and getting a rate from their fx dept what other opyions do we have. thanks in advance to any replies.
i do relatively regular currency transactions - i have a interactive broker account http://www.interactivebrokers.com. Their idealpro system is for currency traders but the their IDEAL system is for the the kind of thing you want to do and the rates are usually about 1 or 2 cent better than the rate a bank will give you. Even allowing for the cost of wire transfers i calculated the saving once and i think it was about 10 or 20 euro saving per 1000 euro
One catch is that money wire transfered into your account (ie the sterling) must come from an account with your name on it - so in practice you would have to have a sterling bank account to pay the cheque into. Options for this worth investigating include hsbc in the uk (will open an account with an irish address under some circumstances), banks over the border and some banks in roi will open sterling accounts (at a cost)
You also have to instal on your computer their tws trading platform and work out how to do the exchange transaction on it which involves a little learning.