client
Success Stories
Business Owner Case Studies
Case Study One – Adige Radiators Ltd (Volkan Ozer)
Adige Radiators is a London-based business set up in 2006. They specialise in the wholesale of hardware, plumbing and heating equipment, supplies and its retail sale via mail order houses or the internet.
http://www.adigeradiators.com/
Volkan, known to everyone as Vinnie, is one of the 3-founding Company directors and my main point of contact within the company.
The company imports from a variety of countries including China, Turkey and Poland using a diverse number of currencies including; GBP, USD, EUR, PLZ and TRY to pay their suppliers.
In addition to the normal Cosmos services (including highly competitive, fully inclusive exchange rates, rate monitoring to alert clients to opportunities in the currency markets, and local collection accounts).
Adige also uses the Cosmos 24/7 trading platform, so even out-of-hours they can contract and purchase the currency they need at an agreed set spread from the interbank market, upload beneficiary bank account details, upload copy invoice for compliance and, with prompt payment via free of charge online banking on their part.
Their trades are always available to settle on a same-day transfer basis, allowing them to negotiate the finest payment terms for themselves.
Case Study Two – P J WISEMAN LIMITED / Gemma Harling
P J Wiseman is a business first established in 2000 that is now part of the M K Morse Group.
They are a North Yorkshire-based company specialising in the sale of machinery, industrial equipment, ships and aircraft and the wholesale of machine tools.
They both import and export abroad, mainly with the EU and USA.
The company has GBP, EUR and USD bank accounts based in the UK and in the past has used banks and mainstream brokers to assist with their currency exchange transfers, both when paying suppliers and receiving currency funds from clients.
By using Cosmos, Gemma knows I will alert her to opportunities as they arise, offer highly competitive, fully inclusive exchange rates and help her marketing by offering her clients in the USA the use of a USD collection account in New York and the clients based in the EU the use of a local EUR collection account based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Very useful in these post-Brexit days.
Case Study Three – Cantab Software Limited
I first met Kevin Reid socially as we are fellow members of the Cornwall Astronomy Society.
Kevin is the sole Director of Cantab Software Limited, a UK company he set up in 1996. He is also the Director – Information Technology for a US company, Intervent Health and gets paid in USD.
Over the years, Kevin has used banks and various brokerages to repatriate his funds back to the UK with varying degrees of cost and ease of use.
Cosmos was able to simplify matters and save the client both time and money as we hold USD client safeguarding accounts both in the UK and in the USA so that when Cantab bill Intervent Health, Intervent can simply pay Cantab in USD via online banking transferring using the local US ACH payment system to a clients collection account Cosmos has opened for in New York and/or any USD funds Cantab has in its USD accounts based both in the USA and UK can be sent by local online banking transfer. This not only speeds up the bank transfers but saves the client on any additional banking costs.
Like with all clients, Cosmos will monitor the currency markets for Cantab to alert Kevin to opportunities as they arise. From start to finish, in 99% of cases, Kevin receives the converted GBP funds into his GBP account on the same day the payments start off in USD in the USD account of Intervent Health.
Personal Case Studies
Personal Case Studies
Case Study Four – Ms. V Stewart
There are two equally important parts to the Cosmos discovery call with a client.
The first is to find out about the client’s requirement;
their timeframe; availability of funds; attitude to risk and any unique factors
in the proposed transaction.
The second is to explain how Cosmos adds value. It’s not what we do. Clients have no shortage of currency payment solution options these
days. Cosmos adds value by how we do things. By not having a ‘one size fits all approach’. By treating each client like the individual, they are.
A recent case illustrates the importance of this approach.
A British client, Ms V Stewart was completing on the sale of her property in Spain and within three working days, completing on the purchase
of a UK property for her daughter.
Issue number 1. Because of the tight timeframe, Ms Stewart did not have the time to receive the Euro sale proceeds into her own Euro
account from her solicitors in Spain to then transfer it to Cosmos, so the funds were coming straight into Cosmos third party direct form the solicitors in Spain. That is allowed by the FCA, the UK regulator so that was set up.
Issue number 2. Post-Brexit, euro transfers form an EU country to the UK can elicit a charge of up to 1.5% of the value of the
transfer to the transferring client. In this case, that would have incurred Ms Stewart a charge of close to €8,000 just to transfer her funds ready for conversion. Luckily for her, Ms Stewart as a client of Cosmos gave her access to our Euro client collection account based in Dublin, Ireland. As both Spain and Ireland are still within the EU single market, the bank in Spain charged €300 for the euro funds transfer instead of €8,000.
Issue number 3. As the client was travelling back to the UK, she asked for the Pound sterling funds bought from the sale of the Euro net
sale proceeds from her property sale in Spain to be sent direct to a firm of UK solicitors to fund the purchase of a property for her daughter. Under the FCAs anti-money laundering rules and regulations, in the vast majority of cases, a third party to third party transfer is not allowed. However, Cosmos and its partners took legal advice and because the funds were coming into us from a firm of solicitors in a permitted jurisdiction and going out to another firm of solicitors, again in a permitted jurisdiction, we were able to set this payment
solution up for the client.
Issue number 4. We added the daughter to Ms Stewart’s account to help comply with FCA rules and regulations.
Ms Stewart provided us with the required documentation to satisfy FCA rules and regulations before the date of completion so on the same
day the euro funds came in, we were able to convert them, send the required Pounds Sterling out to the UK solicitors in good time to facilitate the UK property purchase and the balance to the clients own Pounds Sterling account.
Between the saving on the transfer fee (€8,000) and the better Cosmos exchange rate we were able to help Ms Stewart not only complete
on her property purchase on time and with the minimum of fuss but also save her well over €10,000 in the process.
Try doing all that in a fully automated payment platform where these days there isn’t even a telephone number for a client to call for assistance or dealing with mainstream banks, both overseas and in the UK!
Case Study Five -Heather Lewis-Pryer
I have known Heather for more years than I care to remember helping her fund the purchase of a US residential property investment portfolio and their servicing costs. We kept in touch and then in 2021, she advised me that she was selling up entirely in the States and whether I could help her repatriate her funds back to the UK.
The registration process for a personal client consists of a 90-second online registration application form and, if like Heather, you are on the electoral roll and lived at the same address for over 3-years, chances are, like her, we can do our ID and address checks electronically and will not even need back up documents. Even when we do, they rarely get more complicated than a colour copy of the photo page of your passport for ID and a less than 90-day-old bank statement or utility bill to confirm you at the address you register under.
As Heather was back in the UK at the time, and with the Covid pandemic travel restrictions making it impossible for Heather to travel out to the USA to personally instruct her local bank there to wire her USD funds to Cosmos for conversion into GBP; we simplified matters by accepting the funds third party directly in from Heather’s closing agent. Our compliance requirements were straightforward (a copy of the property sale contact and details of the closing agent).
Post-completion on the sale of her US property assets, the funds were duly received in our client-safeguarding USD bank account and safely held there whilst we monitored the markets until Heather’s target exchange rate was reached and exceeded.
With Cosmos, all client funds are held in fully segregated bank accounts in full accordance with FCA rules and regulations. These accounts are also non-interest bearing, so we do not earn out of client funds meaning there is no ulterior motive when we suggest the client might want to consider waiting for a positive market movement.
Case Study Six – Toni & Donald S
I was a guest on ‘The Chris Voss Show’ podcast
Toni & Donald regularly listen to the Chris Voss show at their home in Arizona, USA.
Toni & Donald were at a property exhibition in August 2024 in Portugal run by AFPOP, afpop: Portugal Foreign Residents Association when they came across the Cosmos brand in the AFPOP exhibition brochure (we are members), put two and two together and contacted me explaining they had already lost out twice on the opportunity of buying a holiday retreat in Portugal because of the impossibility of getting their bank in the USA, to take their verbal or email instructions to transfer their US Dollar funds to their solicitors in Portugal. The bank in the USA were adamant that the only way they could transfer their US Dollar funds out of the country was by visiting their bank branch in person to sign the normal paperwork.
To my mind, Toni & Donald’s requirement was (and I don’t normally like to use industry jargon) ‘plain vanilla’. Their US Dollar funds were in their account with their bank in the USA. These needed collecting, converting to Euro funds and sent to their solicitor in Portugal to fund their Portuguese property purchase.
I asked Toni & Donald to register to comply with FCA rules and regulations. They did so in a couple of minutes online including uploading their POI & POA documents.
Cosmos has a client collection account in New York so because the $ funds transfer was domestic (inside the USA) this could be easily done online.
I confirmed receipt of their US Dollar funds into our NY based client collection account.
Toni & Donald then let me have their Portuguese solicitors’ euro clients bank account details and the timeframe that the funds were needed by.
I then carefully monitored the markets and managed to convert their $ funds into the € whenever the exchange rate peaked and was favourable for them within their chosen timeframe and then released the funds to the Portuguese solicitors’ clients account in a timely fashion.
All of this whilst Toni & Donald were in Portugal, so it was a case of third property lucky for them.
With Cosmos, the impossible was turned into the straightforward and Toni & Donald completed on their Portuguese property purchase in late September and are now happily organising refurbishment works, buying furniture, fixtures, and fittings.
Case Study Seven – Tony Yaskin
Tony served in the US Air Force rising to the rank of Lt Col. He is now happily retired and living in the Somerset countryside.
Before using Cosmos, Tony had the monthly hassle and cost of repatriating his US Air Force pension back to the UK. He tried various banks and online payment systems, but each was fraught with excess costs and time delays and because their systems are fully automated, Tony had no control over the timing of his monthly US Dollar to Pound transfers.
With Cosmos, after a quick and easy registration process, Tony obtained access to a US Dollar collection account in New York. This enabled him to simply transfer his monthly USD funds free of charge online to our clients USD collection account.
At Cosmos we monitor the currency markets for our clients to alert them to opportunities in the markets when the exchange rate is favourable so clients can maximise their return from each transaction.
Recently, due to an unforeseen family crisis, Tim, Tony’s potato farming son in New Zealand needed financial help.
Despite the extreme market volatility in recent times, with careful analysis Cosmos was able to secure the best pound to New Zealand Dollar exchange rate for over 7 months for Tony, maximising his financial assistance to Tim.
Full testimonials from both our personal and business clients can be seen by clicking the following link: http://cosmoscurrencyexchange.com/reviews/
All reviews, opinions, or case studies presented on our website may not be indicative of all customers. Results may vary and customers agree to proceed at their own risk.
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