I think it is reasonable to have to pay away a bigger spread for non-market amounts – but nobody should have to “deal” on a price wide enough to drive a bus through. There is a clear niche in the market and one company that appears to be successfully filling it is OzForex. Macquarie Financial Services Group recently took a 51% stake in the company and it is using the funding to further expand globally. OzForex already has operations in the UK and New Zealand and has now just has opened an office in Toronto under the brand CanadianForex.
The company’s rates are quite competitive. “As is pretty standard across all our companies, on payments up to CAD100,000 the clients can expect an average margin of between 0.4% to 0.8% from (the) interbank (rate),” says John Corcoran,
“On payments of CAD100,000 plus they can expect average margins of between 0.2% and 0.4%. Again the larger the amount the better the margin and as we work off a live market rate, the spread from (the) interbank (rate) may vary slightly depending on market liquidity. This said, we are also keen not to be beaten on price by a competitor,” he adds.