Making a large and fast international transfer?

[amattie]

I am in the process of purchasing a house in Canada, and was planning to use Sony Bank to transfer the funds -- wife actually opened an account and as a promotion she can buy CAD at the market rate for maybe 3 months (which we are halfway through doing) and then maybe 3000 yen for the transfer of CAD to Canada.

So we were feeling awfully good about this FX solution, but then we discovered that the 3-10 days required to verify the recipient's account for anti-terrorism / anti-money laundering purposes was likely going to go longer than that because of the holidays, and get us uncomfortably close to our relatively tight closing date. Of course, if this happens we would ask for an extension on closing, and probably get one, but I am still looking for an emergency backup plan if the account review is not completed a week from closing.

And in this emergency situation, costs are not really the issue, we are only caring about time.

First thought was Wise. We asked and Wise didn't seem to have a problem with executing 20 1M yen transfers in a day or two -- yes, we are moving to a cheap part of Canada -- except that they said after we initiate the transfers because it is a large amount they may request documents from us to verify where the money came from (e.g. tax returns for our income). Any document request is kinda slowing things down and adding uncertainty to the mix, and so that was what I most hoping to get around, if possible.

Next thought was IB LLC. From reading the funding thread here it seems like we could walk into an SMBC branch and get a bunch of money into our IB LLC account that day. I have seen mention of a 5M yen limit per month for online transfer -- if that also applies to a branch transfer, this option is dead in the water. But even if we can get 20M yen into IB LLC in a day, and change it for a favorable rate into CAD, getting it out of IB quickly may be tricky. Or not?

I suspect that once the money is in IB LLC I have successfully avoided Japan's money laundering and terrorism review, right? And are we sure that such a review does not happen when I show up at SMBC with 20M yen? Presumably SMBC knows that IB is not a terrorist organization.

My wife has just opened the IB LLC account and not yet funded it, or transferred out. It seems that transfers to a third party (e.g. my lawyer who I need to get the money to) require verification from IB. Again, this is slowing things down, but probably unavoidable. Any idea of a best case time for a transfer out of IB? I might be able to add my wife's name to my bank account in Canada which might facilitate her transferring money to it as her own account (Assuming IB LLC can transfer to Canada, and IB Canada account it not required?), but then we still have the problem of transferring it to the lawyer who actually has an account with the same bank, just down the road a bit. Cause the bank has an online e-transfer limit of 5K per day -- not sure if I can somehow get authorization for my parents to walk into the branch and do it, or do it myself with a bunch of DocuSigning online

Any other ideas? If someone can help me figure this out they will absolutely be my hero. Thanks!

PS. Parents don't have 200,000 CAD in cash and I'm not wanting to ask them to sell securities and get hit with capital gains tax just to do a bit of bridge financing for me here.

PPS. I suppose if I had a crypto account with an exchange that dealt in Canada, I could transfer crypto there and withdraw to my Canadian bank (which gets me halfway there), but not likely to a third party. Not sure how fast or expensive such withdrawals are, though.

[TokyoWart]

I use my Prestia account for international transfers to the US and am able to do the entire transfer within the same day as long as it is not a public holiday on either end of the transfer. Those transfers are from my account in Japan to an account in my name in the US so I am not sure this would apply to your circumstances. Online transfers are limited to two 3 million yen equivalent transfers per day but going into an office to do the transfer in person I think there is no upper limit (at least for within the range of numbers discussed in your post).

[Teflon]

I've seen some positive comments in Japan finance reddit group about https://www.ofx.com/. I've never used them but, apparently, they are very good for large/fast money transfers but you need to call them to get a quote.

[amattie]

I've seen some positive comments in Japan finance reddit group about https://www.ofx.com/. I've never used them but, apparently, they are very good for large/fast money transfers but you need to call them to get a quote.

Interesting! Thanks for this.