Push and Pull limits, why bother

[Anonymous]

I need to make a somewhat large international transfer (heroin won't refine itself...)  The small US institution I am using won't do outgoing international wires (it will accept them, and does domestic both ways, but not international out.)  So I asked about limits for ACH.  He said "Are you talking about starting with us, or another institution pulling the funds?"  When I explained it was the latter he said "There's no limit for us, we respect whatever the limits of the other institution is."  Since I had already checked the limits of the international processor, problem solved...

But that made me think why do banks worry about limits when starting from their own institution, since it is clearly so easy to circumvent?  The exceptions, like mybankingdirect, where external ACH isn't allowed, makes sense, but for the others.

[CreditCuriosity]

Likely kinda like laws of you can't travel outside US with 10k cash or what not without declaring due to some reason whether money laundering etc..  Likely fine with a pull from other financial institution as then their hands aren't possibly dirty?  Just my guess and might be a bad one at that

[Anonymous]

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@CreditCuriosity wrote:

Likely kinda like laws of you can't travel outside US with 10k cash or what not without declaring due to some reason whether money laundering etc..  Likely fine with a pull from other financial institution as then their hands aren't possibly dirty?  Just my guess and might be a bad one at that

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Same applies for domestic transactions too though, and I am not sure how easy it is for a FI to shrug of responsibility that way (maybe it is!)

Just for the record, you have to declare if you bring $10K+ into this country, but any amount is legal.   (But, given civil fortfeiture, any amount can be seized for practically no reason).

[DONZI]

Have you experience with international wires or ACH?

If there is an important time window at play, it might be good to zoom in on that some.

A friend of mine did an xfer into the USA of ~$130K USD and the process took a long time. Think it was from Scotia Bank which from what my friend told me, has (Scotia) some connection/agreement/or ?? with BofA, the receiving FI.

[Anonymous]

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@DONZI wrote:

Have you experience with international wires or ACH?

If there is an important time window at play, it might be good to zoom in on that some.

A friend of mine did an xfer into the USA of ~$130K USD and the process took a long time. Think it was from Scotia Bank which from what my friend told me, has (Scotia) some connection/agreement/or ?? with BofA, the receiving FI.

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I've use Wise (and now xe) to move smaller amounts of money out.  They have fairly low limits for ACH (around $35K) before they want wires, and amounts much above that need more documentation.   So I am trying doing multiple ACH below $35K.  Costs more but less headache and it takes seconds (at least for the test amounts of $4K!)

[DONZI]

I hope it goes well for you. Sounds like you've got a better handle on it than my friend.

The xfer I refer to I don't recall the details, but I remember them not being able to get any status other than it can take up to xx days. IIRC it was nearly a month until completion. Now that I think about it, it may very well have been one of the Peruvian National Bank and not Scotiabank.

[Anonymous]

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@DONZI wrote:

I hope it goes well for you. Sounds like you've got a better handle on it than my friend.

The xfer I refer to I don't recall the details, but I remember them not being able to get any status other than it can take up to xx days. IIRC it was nearly a month until completion. Now that I think about it, it may very well have been one of the Peruvian National Bank and not Scotiabank.

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Thanks.   This is really for a house mortgage deposit for my daughter.   Looks like the mortgage will be from HSBC, who know a LOT about money laundering!

HSBC's Money Laundering Scandal (investopedia.com)

[iced]

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@CreditCuriosity wrote:

Likely kinda like laws of you can't travel outside US with 10k cash or what not without declaring due to some reason whether money laundering etc..  Likely fine with a pull from other financial institution as then their hands aren't possibly dirty?  Just my guess and might be a bad one at that

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I would also guess it's something generally along these lines, mixed in with risk assessment by the bank. Moving large sums of money (usually considered by governments to be $10,000 or more) has a lot of scrutiny and can set off flags for everything from laundering to terrorist funding, so I imagine there's additional hoops the banks also have to jump through to cover themselves. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of smaller/medium sized FIs just don't want to deal with it and use limits to mitigate their risk.

The FIs I've had the least resistance to large wire transfers with are, not unexpectedly, the large FIs like Chase and Fidelity that routinely deal with clients who move such sums of money around with regularity.