So I recently made a trip to London for business, and took Uber from the airport to my hotel. I was charged GBP56.85. On that day, the average spot rate was 1 GBP = 1.7585 SGD (retrieved from poundsterlinglive.com)
When I checked my OCBC credit card bill, the SGD equivalent was $103.98 - translating to a conversion rate of 1 GBP = 1.829 SGD.
Holy shit. A FX charge of 4%.
It's amazing how upfront commissions for wealth management products have gone down over the years - in Singapore, you can transact in unit trusts at 0% front-end load, or in stocks for 0.08%. And banks are still ripping off customers by sky-high FX charges.
I quickly checked the bill for my Uber trip back (hotel to airport) - the GBP 46.05 fare translated to SGD 84.10, effectively a 3.87% FX rate given that the average spot rate was 1 GBP = 1.7582 SGD.
That's what most banks are - institutions licensed to cheat customers in a legal and legitimate way.
