Best Bank for Dollar Accounts?

[OnMyWay]

4 minutes ago, hk blues said:

Why would it be any different to doing the same with BPI?

I don't have any dog in the fight, just wondering why BPI is recommended but Metrobank not.

It is not about the bank.  Same could happen at BPI.  When making an international transfer from a foreign currency to a local currency, someone has to determine an exchange rate, and it probably won't be favorable.  You have no control.  Much better to transfer dollar to dollar, then take control of when and where you exchange the dollars to pesos.

[OnMyWay]

4 minutes ago, Gator said:

I don’t know of a specific reason if one is better than the other as I only have an account with BPI. But what might be a minor factor is the exchange rate. Today at 12:06 pm:

BPI = 56.20

Metrobank = 55.40

Those rates may not apply to International transfers.  There are usually middlemen involved.  Better to transfer $ to $.

[hk blues]

14 minutes ago, OnMyWay said:

It is not about the bank.  Same could happen at BPI.  When making an international transfer from a foreign currency to a local currency, someone has to determine an exchange rate, and it probably won't be favorable.  You have no control.  Much better to transfer dollar to dollar, then take control of when and where you exchange the dollars to pesos.

I'm not American, though. 

Whilst I agree in principal it's not always viable for us non-Americans.  For example, I have accounts with BPI and Metrobank but neither offer GBP accounts as standard so I'm stuck with transferring GBP to my peso account here and letting my local bank change to pesos.  That said, the rate from Metrobank is always competitive and I almost always get more than the published rate, possibly because it's a larger amount.

[hk blues]

30 minutes ago, Gator said:

I don’t know of a specific reason if one is better than the other as I only have an account with BPI. But what might be a minor factor is the exchange rate. Today at 12:06 pm:

BPI = 56.20

Metrobank = 55.40

For USD maybe but not so for GBP - 

Metrobank rate GBP 71.20

BPI rate GBP 70.29