ANZ NZ International Money Transfers: Everything You Need To Know

Are you looking to send money overseas with ANZ? While the bank is a safe, fast, and reasonably-priced option; it's not the cheapest of all and might land you unexpected fees. Take a look at our in-depth guide to find out everything you need to know about sending money abroad with ANZ.

🦘 From Australia? See our ANZ Australia guide here.

A large and influential bank in New Zealand, ANZ Bank New Zealand is a financial services giant forming part of the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, boasting around 2 million customers locally and operations spanning across much of the Asia-Pacific region.

Naturally, among ANZ's many services on offer are wire transfers, which allow customers to send money from the New Zealand dollar to major foreign currencies around the globe. However, while being slightly cheaper than most other banks in New Zealand for this service, the bank's NZ$9.00 transaction fee and exchange rate margins leave international payments considerably outpaced by cheaper alternatives available on the market.

What Will ANZ New Zealand Charge You?

Like other banks in New Zealand, ANZ charges a single, flat fee on all outbound wire transfers (sometimes called "telegraphic transfers" in New Zealand.)

These fees, which are a type of fixed fee and remain the same regardless of the amount sent, unlike commission fees. This fee is only NZ$9.00 when the transfer is made online via ANZ's goMoney app or ANZ Internet Banking. Bear in mind that the minimum transfer is NZ$100.00 and the maximum is NZ$10,000.00 for the goMoney app and NZ$50,000.00 over internet banking. Larger amounts still will need to be send over the telephone or in-branch.

These fees are waived for transfers to many countries in the Pacific. If you're sending money to Western Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Kiribati, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste, New Caledonia, or the Cook Islands; you will be charged no fixed fee on your transfer.

ANZ Exchange Rates: Beware The Hidden Fees

Over and above the NZ$9.00 fixed fee you can expect to pay on international payments with ANZ New Zealand, you will also pay what's known as the exchange rate margin. This is less of a "fee" in the strict sense but rather an additional cost to your transfer:

Exchange rate margins are the difference between the exchange rate at which you're charged by the bank, and the exchange rate at which the bank buys the currency it sells to you. For example, if ANZ buy were to buy US dollars with New Zealand dollars from another bank to sell on to you, it would pay what's known as the mid-market exchange rate. In this example, ANZ might sell each New Zealand dollar to buy each US dollar at a rate of 0.7227 each, which it would then sell on to you for 0.7109 New Zealand dollars each. In this way, ANZ can charge a 1.63% exchange rate margin on its transfers, translating to NZ$16.30 on every NZ$1,000 you exchange for US dollars.

Bear in mind that, while ANZ waives the NZ$9.00 transaction fee for transfers from New Zealand to most Pacific Island countries, in the end, you won't be paying much less in fees due to the fact that ANZ's exchange rate margin for transfers to Pacific Island currencies is higher on average than those to other currencies.

The Costs Combined

All in all, ANZ's exchange rate margins taken in combination with its standard fees leave the bank a rather reasonably-priced choice for international payments, but certainly not the cheapest out there. When taken together, ANZ's exchange rate margins and fixed fees can constitute a fairly hefty slice of your transfer amount — one which you'll feel most if you plan on sending a small amount of money overseas.

For instance, let's assume you sent NZ$500 to the bank account of a friend living in India. With ASB, you'd pay NZ$11.92 (or 2.43% of the value of your transfer) in hidden exchange rate margin fees and a further NZ$9.00 in transaction fees. The total fee amount, NZ$20.92, would therefore constitute over 4% of your transfer amount and leave your recipient with ₹25,162 at the time of writing.

Compare this to sending the same amount to India with Wise, the much-loved money transfer specialist that was the cheapest service for this transfer on Monito's comparison engine at the time of writing. With them, you'd pay NZ$4.99 in transaction fees and a further NZ$0.05 in exchange rate fees, getting your friend ₹25,801 — around 2.5% more than they'd have gotten with the bank.

Take a look at the examples in the graph below to get a better idea of how ANZ New Zealand's fees are broken up, and what you might expect to pay when you send money abroad (as of 11/03/2021 at 12:30 +01:00 GMT):

ANZ International Money Transfers: Other Fees to Anticipate

Over and above the standard fees and exchange rate margins you can expect to pay when sending money abroad with ANZ New Zealand, there may be other expenses still to get your transfer done. Depending on your circumstances, these might include the following:

• A NZ$28.00 service fee per transaction if you send your transfer with staff assistance, for example, in-branch or over the telephone. (This is in place of the NZ$9.00 fee for online banking transfers.)
• A NZ$25.00 service fee per transaction if you wish to amend, cancel, or trace your transfer after having sent it

In addition, if ANZ New Zealand cannot transfer your funds directly into your beneficiary's bank account and needs to rely on a correspondent or intermediary bank, then you may pay a correspondent bank fee that can range anywhere between NZ$10.00 and NZ$100.00.

Is ANZ New Zealand Right For You?

When it comes to international money transfers, ANZ New Zealand can certainly make sense if you're already a customer at the bank and if you already trust its service quality. Similarly, if you don't mind paying slightly extra in fees compared to the cheapest services out there, then we recommend sticking with the bank as it is — after all — the cheapest for these types of transfers in the country and will give you everything you're looking for.

On the other hand, if you're looking to save money on every transfer you make abroad from New Zealand, then there's a large and competitive marketplace out there for you to compare among money transfer specialists. These services, which transfer money across the globe faster, more cheaply, and just as securely as the banks, offer better exchange rates even to the foreign currencies that enjoy low exchange rate margins at ANZ, such as the Aussie and US dollars and the British pound (and that's to say nothing about the other currencies around the globe.)

Wise was the cheapest transfer service on 38.8% of all comparisons from New Zealand on Monito in 2020

To compare money transfer specialists, run a search on Monito's real-time comparison engine to take advantage of the freshest fee and exchange rate data and promotional offerings.

To get a better idea of just how much you could be saving by switching to one of these services, take a look at the table below to see how ANZ New Zealand stack's up on a NZ$500.00 transfer to Australia (one of ANZ's cheaper exchange currencies) as of 11/03/2021 12:30 +01:00 GMT:

Photo credit: Pear285, distributed under a CC BY-SA 4.0