tnm611 wrote: ↑Thu May 03, 2018 2:09 am
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.
(1) Yes, easy and do-able. I used to accumulate US$ and then send directly from that sub-account to the US. Easy-peasy.
(2) Correct (unless something changed in the last 14 months)--once set up in person, you can do it by phone, and platinum gives you a free monthly transfer (overkill, IMO). However, it is my understanding that you can only have one registered foreign acct.
So i have a similar setup where I can fund IB via my international accounts (GBP) but doing local in JPY costs a lot due to international transfer fee. Rhe reason is because I have a US domiciled IB account, if you open a JP brokerage account with IB you can furikomi to it as normal and then transfer money between your two IB accounts.
For the record I haven't setup a local JP brokerage account with IB, i instead use Monex for NISA and local JPY investing, and my IB for mostly gbp based index funds and etfs.
Have you actually transferred money between a Japanese domiciled account and a US domiciled account? Their FAQ seems to indicate this is not supported. (Probably for regulatory reasons?)
gerdemb wrote: ↑Thu Jul 19, 2018 6:51 am
Have you actually transferred money between a Japanese domiciled account and a US domiciled account? Their FAQ seems to indicate this is not supported. (Probably for regulatory reasons?)
Copy/pasting the relevant part of the FAQ for this discussion as I just looked it up:
Do I have to make an international wire transfer?
Transfer method will vary depending on the currency.
- JPY-International wire transfer
...
When you fund your IBLLC account in JPY, please make arrangements to send an international wire transfer. Please be sure to include your IB account name and number on the wire.
So yes, an international transfer seem to be necessary even if you transfer JPY from your Japanese bank account.