I am a US citizen and will soon also be an Israeli Citizen. I'm trying to figure out the cheapest way to change USD to Israeli Shekel. Interactive Brokers does allow converting USD to shekel at a great conversion rate, but they don't let you withdraw the shekels! Any other good options? The range I'm looking to transfer is $10k-$100k USD at a time.
Thanks
Foreign exchange transfer services are typically the cheapest way to transfer money and exchange it at the same time. They offer the best exchange rates by far, and, depending on the source and destination countries, it can be possible to avoid any fees on sending or receiving the money. Popular examples of these services are US Forex, XE Trade and Transferwise.
Note that these services are best when you are not in a hurry to transfer the money. It can take up to a week for the money to be transferred. A wire transfer will be faster (but much more expensive).
A lot of times banks will offer you great conversion rates, so just wire your USD to your Israeli bank. It sounds like your funds are already electronic.
If there is a complication in this, you can go over the bitcoin network and withdraw from a bitcoin exchange in Israel connected to an Israeli bank account. You can use the bitcoin network directly, or use a service provider such as Uphold which uses bitcoin technology merely for an underlying accounting system and also converts to shekel (not sure about withdrawing with them, never used).
Bitcoin markets are liquid enough for moving 10-100k at extremely thin spreads, so much better rates than most banks and investment firms. (looking at one-tenth of one percent at time of writing on Bitfinex), this relies on the exchange chosen in Israel also being liquid.
Then there are the remittance systems like Western Union. These are the most expensive.
