Lloyd's Bank vs. Sending through post office

[Tokyo_gal]

I'm not sure if you guys have heard of Lloyd's bank... It costs about 3000yen to send any amount of money to bank account back at home. Then of course any fees that your bank and home charges etc... Cheap to send but a pain in the butt to set up the whole system of sending.
I have one of those Post Office bank accounts right now. Wondering if any of you have experience with this. How much is it to send and how do I send money? Much faster than lloyd's (I believe) but don't know about fees.

LLoyd's bank or sending through post office.... which is better?

Thanks!

[ENF]

I've used lloyd's for all of the years I've been in Japan.

They setup a transfer account that I can use via a furikomi transfer (I use the online banking transfer). As long as I transfer the money before 3pm on a regular business day, the money will show up my account in another country within the next 12 hours after the 3pm deadline.

The lloyd's fee is 2,000 yen and then the bank I use in my home country charges another $15.00 for receiving the funds.

For the post office, never used it, can't really comment on the service. I'm happy with how painless and automated the lloyds process is.

Good luck.

[fxgai]

The transfer fee at the Post Office is 2,500 yen (relatively cheap) but the exchange rates the Post Office work with are not very favourable. But the same goes for Lloyd's. As far as costs go, I think they are roughly equivalent.

But more generally speaking, which service is better in terms of cost depends on how much money you plan to transfer.

Transfers have fixed costs in the shape of explicit fees, but also hidden variable costs which are higher with services that offer less attractive exchange rates, and increase in proportion to the amount of money you transfer.

For small sized transfers (say approximately 100,000 yen), Lloyd's and the Post Office are both good because they have relatively cheap fixed costs (transfer fees).

But for larger transfers, Lloyd's and the Post Office will result in less money arriving at the destination because you get hit by their poor exchange rates.

For something like a 500,000 yen transfer, Shinsei bank and Citibank would both be around 50% less expensive than Lloyd's and the Post Office, courtesy of the more favourable exchange rates that they offer. (Shinsei and Citi have slightly higher fixed transfer fees though, so don't go out of your way to use them if you are only transfering small amounts.)

It is a pain to set up accounts with financial institutions, but that's just a fact of life. Reputable organizations have an obligation to "know their customers" for anti-money laundering purposes.