Funding an Interactive Brokers account

[tnm611]

Hi everyone!

I've had an Interactive Brokers account here in Japan for about a year, and all is good, but up until this point I've only ever funded the account from my bank accounts abroad (UK + Australia). I want to start funding my account from here in Japan, but it seems that even though the account you need to send your funds to is Citibank Japan, it seems to require an international bank transfer...and with the fees involved, especially if it's a monthly transfers, you end up losing a great deal of money.

Does anyone have any experience with this, or suggestions? It seems really impractical, considering IB say they're also based in Japan.

Thanks in advance!

[RetireJapan]

Transferwise is great for international transfers. I haven't funded my IB account yet so can't help there.

http://www.retirejapan.info/blog/transferwise-revisited

Anyone else?

[captainspoke]

How about making transfers to your UK/Oz accts (via transferwise, or something similar) on a semi-annual or annual basis? Then continue to fund IB as you've been doing.

If you happen to have a Shinsei acct, you could accumulate and hold pounds/AU$ (or not), and then make the transfer when you wanted. Somewhat similar to transferswise, Shinsei allows you to register one foreign acct, and then subsequent transfers can be done on the phone (not online).

[Ori]

Are you sure that it requires international transfer? Have you confirmed with IB?
According to anjin in this post it shouldn't.

[tnm611]

Thanks everyone! Appreciate your responses!

I do have a TransferWise account, but just hoped to avoid any kind of international transfer, as it does somewhat kill the point about IB's low fees!

I do have a Shinsei account also, and didn't know about the foreign account thing--what does that actually mean? You can hold foreign currency in your JP Shinsei account?

According to that other post, it does sound like an IB account can be funded with a domestic transfer, but I've just logged in again and checked the details of the bank you need to transfer to:

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Bank Name: Citibank, N.A., Tokyo Branch
Bank Address: Otemachi Park Building, 1-1-1 Otemachi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-8132, Japan
SWIFT/BIC Code: CITIJPJTXXX
Bank Account Title: Interactive Brokers LLC
Bank Account Address: One Pickwick Plaza, Greenwich, Connecticut 06830, United States
Bank Account Number: 0159170403

------

When I tried doing a furikomi online, I couldn't seem to work it out, so I actually went into a Resona bank branch and showed this to them, and they said that even though it's a branch in Tokyo, it needs to be an international transfer for Citibank... I don't fully understand that.

Maybe I'll ask at Shinsei instead...

[RetireJapan]

I'd ask IB. I remember their phone reps being pretty good.

[tnm611]

Thanks RetireJapan, I'll give that a shot

[gerdemb]

If you search in Japanese, you can find posts detailing how to fund an IB account with a domestic furikomi transfer. However, it seems like a sort of backdoor that is not technically supported.

[tnm611]

gerdemb, thanks for letting me know! I'll try searching at some point!

[StockBeard]

didn't know about the foreign account thing--what does that actually mean? You can hold foreign currency in your JP Shinsei account?

A few things on that:
1) Yes, you can hold foreign currency in your JP Shinsei account. However, I don't know if transferring it out of Shinsei is easy or even doable. It's considered as an "investment" in FX on their end, and the only option I ever saw from them was to sell it for JPY.
2) You can register foreign accounts with Shinsei as accounts you allow international transfers to. Registering an account needs to be done in person at a Shinsei branch, but once you've done it, sending money to it is reasonably easy (I've done it by phone multiple times, from abroad). Now here's the interesting bit: if you're a platinum member, you can do 1 transfer (to one of your registered foreign accounts) per month for free. At least that was the case in 2015 when I did it.