Bank of Baroda UK Exchange Rates: Everything You Need To Know

Does Bank of Baroda UK offer the best exchange rates for remittances to India? While certainly one of the best transfer services available to non-resident Indians in the UK, Bank of Baroda is still not the leader of the pack.

Take a look at our international money transfer guide to find out how Bank of Baroda UK's fees and exchange rates weigh up, and how you can save money on your next transfer to India:

A major Indian public sector bank with a sizeable presence around the globe, Bank of Baroda (sometimes called "BoB") is one of the most popular banks for non-resident Indians (NRIs) living and working in the United Kingdom.

Alongside everyday banking services, remittances to India form one of the most crucial components of Bank of Baroda's business in the UK, where the bank helps NRIs to move large annual remittance volumes at a very low cost from the UK to India.

All told, exchange rates between the British pound and the Indian rupee are very competitive at Bank of Baroda UK, so long as the beneficiary account in India also belongs to Bank of Baroda. However, if the beneficiary account belongs to any other bank in India, the exchange rate fees stack up, and Bank of Baroda UK quickly becomes significantly more expensive than alternative services.

What Will Bank of Baroda UK Charge You?

As mentioned above, Bank of Baroda UK will charge you no transaction fees for transfers to India, as long as your beneficiary's bank account in India is with Bank of Baroda. This means that, when you remit to India, no extra amount will be deducted in fixed fees or commissions from your funds by the bank before or after it undergoes currency conversion.

However, if your beneficiary has a bank account with any other Indian bank, you will be charged a £10.00 service fee by Bank of Baroda UK for sending the money on its way.

📣 The maximum daily limit for remittances to India from the UK with Bank of Baroda is £10,000.

Bank of Baroda UK Exchange Rates: Beware The Hidden Fees

Even when Bank of Baroda UK doesn't charge a transaction fee for remittances to other BoB accounts in India, the service is by no means "free" in the strict sense of the word.

When you instruct an international money transfer and your bank converts British pounds into Indian rupees, you'll be charged the bank's exchange rate, which is not the same as the exchange rate at which the bank itself purchases the currency from other banks (called the mid-market exchange rate.) In this way, banks (Baroda Bank UK included) make a small profit (called an exchange rate margin) on every pound that you send abroad.

At Baroda Bank, these exchange rate margins fluctuate according to how much money you're remitting to India. Bear in mind that these exchange rates are very low for banks. Many high-street banks in the UK charge exchange rate margins upwards of 10%, making Bank of Baroda UK a comparatively cheap service and well on par with the exchange rates charged by specialist money transfer services.

The Costs Combined

When we look at the full cost of remitting to India with Bank of Baroda UK, it quickly becomes clear that the service is very cheap for transfers to other Bank of Baroda accounts but less so for transfers to other Indian bank accounts.

Suppose, for example, you wanted to transfer £500 to two family members back home in India each — one of whom banks with Bank of Baroda and the other with ICICI Bank. Using Baroda Bank's online banking platform, the first transfer would cost you 0.74% of the value of your transfer (£3.68) and the other would cost you the same amount after the £10.00 transaction fee is deducted (i.e. £3.60.) By the time the money arrives, the family member with BoB would receive ₹50,325 and the other with ICICI Bank would receive ₹49,318.50 — a 2% difference in amounts.

Contrast this to using Wise for the same transfer. According to data from Monito's comparison engine, London-based cross-border payments service Wise was the cheapest service for this transfer at the time of writing, with which you would pay 2.53 in fixed fees and no exchange rate margin. This would get your recipient ₹50,282 — considerably more than what Bank of Baroda would deliver to a non-customer in India but slightly less than what they'd deliver to a customer.

This shows the strengths and weaknesses of using Bank of Baroda to transfer money to India — it is very cheap when remitting to a bank customer in India, but outpaced by the alternatives when it isn't.

Take a look at the fee breakdown below to get a better sense of how Bank of Baroda UK charges fees and exchange rates onto different types of transfers:

Compare the money transfer marketplace and save up to 95% in fees on your next transfer from the UK to India or to any currency or country across the globe:

Bank of Baroda UK International Money Transfers: Other Fees to Anticipate

Over and above the fees outlined above, Bank of Baroda UK may charge you an additional fee over the course of your transfer to India. This fee, a £1.00 handling fee, will be charged if your funds need to be returned to your account due to a delay.

Is Bank of Baroda UK Right For You?

Whether you're banking with Bank of Baroda or simply remitting back to India with them,w the bank is one you can most certainly trust to take care of your finances. Because of their very attractive rates, we recommend using Bank of Baroda for international money transfers to India if your beneficiary has an account with them.

On the other hand, there are four main instances in which using Bank of Baroda to handle your international money transfer to India will probably not make sense for you, in our opinion. These instances are as follows:

• Your beneficiary in India doesn't have a bank account with Bank of Baroda;
• You want to send money to a country other than India;
• You want to be sure you're getting the lowest-cost way to transfer money to India every time;
• You want to transfer more than £10,000.00 to India.

If any of these are the case for you, then we recommend you explore your options among the many competitive money transfer services that are available between the UK and India. These services, which are on average very cheap (even compared to Baroda Bank UK), allow you to get the job done quickly, securely, and — perhaps most importantly — at a fraction of the cost of the banks.

Run a search on Monito's real-time comparison engine to find the best deal for your transfer. To get a better picture of just how much you can expect to save, take a look at how Bank of Baroda UK stacks up against several of these low-cost services on a £1,000 transfer from the UK to India (as of 04/03/2021 at 12:00 +01:00 GMT):

* The receiving amounts quoted for Small World and Remitly are the result of promotional pricing for first-time users and will differ from those offered to frequent users.

Photo credit: Gryffindor, distributed under CC BY-SA 4.0, CC BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 2.5, CC BY-SA 2.0, and CC BY-SA 1.0 licenses, cropped from the original