Your Own Money, Held Hostage

If you operate a group structure — a UK holding company, a German operating subsidiary, a Singapore entity — you will be familiar with this frustration: moving funds between your own companies is treated by the banking system exactly the same as paying a third-party supplier in a foreign country.

That means SWIFT fees. Correspondent banking charges. FX conversion costs. And, frequently, delays of one to three business days.

Why This Happens

The reason is structural. Traditional banks do not have visibility into your group structure. Each entity is a separate customer, held at possibly separate institutions, in separate jurisdictions. When you initiate an intercompany transfer, the bank processes it as an anonymous international wire — because from its perspective, that is exactly what it is.

The correspondent banking network — the chain of intermediary banks that route international payments — was not designed to understand the concept of intragroup transactions. It charges accordingly.

The Scale of the Problem

For a group of four companies doing £500,000 in intercompany flows per month, the costs compound quickly:

  • •Direct SWIFT fees: £15–40 per transaction × 20 transactions/month = up to £800/month
  • •FX spread on currency conversion: 1–2% on converted amounts
  • •Accounting overhead: 4–8 hours per month reconciling intercompany positions
  • •Float costs: 1–3 days of capital tied up in transit

Annualised, this is a material operational cost — and one that delivers zero business value.

The Compliance Layer

Beyond the direct costs, intercompany transactions carry compliance obligations that most businesses handle poorly. Transfer pricing documentation. Intercompany loan agreements. VAT treatment of intragroup services. These are not optional — they are legal requirements in most jurisdictions.

The result is that finance teams spend significant time generating documentation for transactions that should, in a rational world, be instant ledger entries.

A Better Architecture

The solution is to hold all entities — regardless of jurisdiction — within a single payment infrastructure that understands group structures.

With multi-currency accounts under a single relationship:

  • •Intercompany transfers are instant — no SWIFT routing, no correspondent fees
  • •Intercompany invoices can be generated automatically — meeting transfer pricing requirements without manual effort
  • •FX conversion is transparent and competitive — with a stated margin rather than a hidden spread
  • •Reconciliation is automated — through direct accounting integrations

This is the model EXFI was built to deliver. Not because it is theoretically elegant — but because we operated group structures ourselves for two decades and experienced every one of these problems firsthand.

EXFI provides intercompany payment infrastructure for group structures operating across multiple jurisdictions. Payment services are provided by Gemba Finance Ltd (FCA FRN: 804853).