Moving Money From Overseas Investments

Cashing out an investment held abroad leaves you with a sum in a foreign currency that stays exposed to the exchange rate until you bring it into sterling. Foreign shares, a holding in an overseas fund, an investment property, or another asset sold overseas: once the sale settles, the proceeds sit in dollars, euros, or another currency, and what they're finally worth in pounds depends on the rate when you convert.

This page is about moving the proceeds of an investment you already hold abroad and protecting their value on the way back, not about investing overseas for the first time. If the asset is an investment property you're selling, the property side, its completion and capital gains position, sits on our selling property abroad page, and this page is the better fit for shares, funds, and other financial assets.

The friction is that you often control the timing here in a way you don't with a property completion or an inheritance. You decide when to sell and when to convert, which is an advantage, but it also means the currency decision is yours to make rather than one forced by a date. Planning the conversion, rather than leaving a large foreign-currency balance sitting exposed after a sale, is what this comes down to.

Because you usually choose when to sell and when to convert, the decision is how to handle a large foreign-currency sum that no particular day forces you to move. If you want certainty, a forward contract fixes a rate for a future date, which is useful when you've decided to convert but want to lock the value in now. If you'd rather aim for a particular rate and you're in no hurry, a target-rate order waits for that level and converts only if the market reaches it, which suits the flexible timing this situation usually allows. For a significant liquidation, our guide to large transfers covers how the bigger conversions are priced and handled.

The source-of-funds evidence for investment proceeds is the paperwork from the sale: a broker's contract note or sale statement for shares, the completion statement for a property, or the account statement showing the funds arriving from the investment. That source of funds proof sits alongside the photo ID and proof of address for opening the account, and matters more the larger the sum. There's no fixed cap on what you can move, though a large amount goes through additional checks.

Selling an investment abroad is usually a capital gains event, and for a UK resident a gain on foreign shares, funds, or property can fall within UK capital gains tax as well as being taxable where the asset or the market sits. Where both countries tax the same gain, a double taxation agreement, or unilateral relief where none applies, can set the foreign tax against the UK bill, up to the UK tax due on that gain. The country specifics sit in each corridor guide, and how it applies to your holdings is a question for an accountant or tax adviser.