Any other non-US (UK based) clients using AMP

J

Jarym

Hi,

Been a happy client of AMP for several weeks now. Recently they updated their funding instructions so that they work through a new bank - BMO Harris - for making account deposits: http://www.ampclearing.com/funding_instructions.html

We're based in the UK and before this change we were able to make a domestic deposit to AMP's UK account electronically and without incurring any fees.

Since the change, AMP still have a UK account for GBP deposits but require a number of fields to be supplied on wire deposits. These fields can only be populated if the transaction is carried out as a SWIFT transaction (or so, that's what two major UK banks have told us).

The net effect is we seem unable to be able to make deposits into our AMP account unless we route them as an international SWIFT transfer (and incur £30 per deposit fee from our bank and wait an additional length of time).

We've reached out to AMP several times but have not as yet received any reply. It doesn't make any sense to us why they would maintain a GBP (Sterling) account in the UK unless they expected UK clients to be able to use it.

Is anyone else affected by this?
 
Ghost_of_Blotto said:
"require a number of fields to be supplied on wire deposits" - e.g. address of account holder etc (for AML compliance purposes)? Which isn't available by BACS. Gotta love red tape...

A solution that might interest you, is to open account with Interactive Brokers. They include 1 free wire tx per month and IB UK will take a domestic deposit from a UK bank which can then be transferred to another FCM. (drawbacks - IB charge a monthly inactivity fee and you'll need to maintain a certain minimum balance with them, and a domestic deposit still takes multiple business days to "clear" before it can be forwarded on for some reason)
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I still have my IB account and could fall back to them - I like AMP since I get MultiCharts.NET included along with decent data (IB's data feed is not particularly great for futures trading) and pretty nice day-trading margins which means we can keep less capital in our brokerage account.

The address of account holder isn't the issue (it isn't even a requested field on the AMP instructions) - the problematic fields are beneficiary bank, beneficiary account and remittance. All we get via BACS is a reference field with a maximum of 18 characters - not enough to put all the requested info into.
 
Jarym said:
I still have my IB account and could fall back to them - I like AMP since I get MultiCharts.NET included along with decent data (IB's data feed is not particularly great for futures trading) and pretty nice day-trading margins which means we can keep less capital in our brokerage account.

The address of account holder isn't the issue (it isn't even a requested field on the AMP instructions) - the problematic fields are beneficiary bank, beneficiary account and remittance. All we get via BACS is a reference field with a maximum of 18 characters - not enough to put all the requested info into.
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Yes, this sux and even worse: I live in euroland... Banks here charge ugly fees on outgoing AND incoming international wires. Dorman, IB etc. have still accounts in euroland and uk. I was happy with AMP, but after this silly change I gonna leave em...

happy trading!
 
battleman said:
Yes, this sux and even worse: I live in euroland... Banks here charge ugly fees on outgoing AND incoming international wires. Dorman, IB etc. have still accounts in euroland and uk. I was happy with AMP, but after this silly change I gonna leave em...

happy trading!
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Well I'd prefer not to leave them and will try to see if they have any plans to facilitate simpler (at least to how it was before the change to BMO Harris) wire deposits for their non-US clients.
 
After running traces on a few customers deposits, the reason provided to us for the fees charge by the correspondent bank was due to needed manual correction of the deposit instructions.

We are going to work with BMO and the Correspondent banks to provide examples of the exact wire instructions needed to avoid any fees. We will send out a notice to our customers when updated tomorrow.
 
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Hi AMP,

Thank you for looking into this. For the avoidance of doubt, we have been told by 2 UK banks (RBS - who hold the account for BMO Harris and HSBC) that it is only possible to enter a maximum of an 18-character 'reference' on domestic wire transfers (known as BACS transfers here in the UK).

It is not possible therefore to follow your deposit instructions with a domestic transfer.

The only way to follow the deposit instructions is to ask for a SWIFT (international) payment - even though it would be to a domestic (UK) bank - because that is the only way that it is possible to set SWIFT fields for beneficiary account, remittance, etc. However, SWIFT payments take longer to clear than BACS and are chargeable.
 
AMP_Trading said:
After running traces on a few customers deposits, the reason provided to us for the fees charge by the correspondent bank was due to needed manual correction of the deposit instructions.

We are going to work with BMO and the Correspondent banks to provide examples of the exact wire instructions needed to avoid any fees. We will send out a notice to our customers when updated tomorrow.
More...

Wires within the EU are free. Since your new EUR (GBP) account is not in the EU, fees will be charged by EU banks(in AND out), because it is an international wire.
For free wires within the EU an IBAN is needed :-)
 
We just did an international payment from our account in the UK to AMP's in Chicago. The cost isn't the kicker - its the 4-6 day wait that is most unacceptable.

I am glad AMP are looking into this because the hassle (having to actually queue in a bank and get them to fill out the paperwork), cost and clearing time is unacceptable enough that we would be unable to stay with them if this isn't improved.
 
AMP_Trading said:
What? 4-6 days? This does not make any sense. All our international transfers are same day or next business day. Please email a copy of your transaction to funds@ampclearing.com - we will do a specific route trace on your payment.
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Hi AMP, my business partner made the transaction at our local HSBC branch approximately an hour ago and that's what he was told. I don't have anything that I can forward to you - if it takes same or next business day we'll be pretty happy but the bank clerk didn't set high expectations.
 
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