A night to remember with HiFX

A VERY special event took place at the Vinci Hotel Estrella Del Mar Beach Club on the evening of Thursday November 24 when more than 100 customers and associates of international currency exchange organisation HiFX were invited to enjoy some superb food and good company and to hear some exciting news from European Managing Director Simon Griffin who flew over from the UK to act as host.

This wasn’t an evening of hard sell but a simple thank you to valued customers, a reveal of how the company expects to expand over the next year and a pat on the back for all of the staff in Spain who work so hard to give a great and personal service to their clients.

The concept of the company which was set up in Windsor in the UK 19 years ago was to offer an efficient and financially sound way for individuals and companies to transfer money around the world in a range of different currencies.

Clearly this was something already offered by banks but they often didn’t give customers the best rates of exchange, had quite high secondary charges and took their time to actually transfer the money from one account to another.

The company has grown over the years and spread across the world to now have branches in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Spain and he USA as well as the UK and according to Simon Griffin, it is such a great employer that he had no qualms in moving his Australian-born wife and two children from Australia to the UK when the opportunity arose.

HiFX has grown so that each month it makes 45,000 payments worth more than £800 million (€920 million) and so efficient had it become that it attracted the attention of a very important American player in the market, Euronet worth $4 billion (€3.77 billion) which doesn’t just offer currency exchange but operates ATMs, pre-paid debit cards and even travel cards such as the UK Oyster card.

With this new strong and supportive parent, HiFX is embarking on a new incarnation as it recently took over one of the world’s most popular currency exchange internet portals, XE.com, which has a staggering 50 million app users worldwide.

Now, using the HiFX services, XE.com users can arrange for the transfer of funds online and so successful has this new service proven to be that HiFX will in due course take advantage of the XE.com international status and change its trading name accordingly.

All of this information was delivered in a friendly and interesting way by Simon Griffin who then decided to lighten the mood by running a competition where everyone who wasn’t a currency dealer was invited to stand up and guess whether a range of different currencies were worth more than a euro.

To make things more fun and easier to judge, participants were asked to put their hands on their heads if they thought the value was higher and on their bottoms if they thought it was lower. With such popular currencies as the Vietnamese Dong (the name of which garnered a few titters) and the Burmese Kyat, the players were soon whittled down until one lucky (or knowledgeable) guest, Derek Langley, Regional Vice-President Andalucia, British Chamber of Commerce in Spain, walked away with the champagne prize.

Just before inviting everyone to enjoy their meal, Simon thanked all the company’s loyal clients and his last words were for all of his amazing staff in Spain who are Lucy Cudd, Sam McIntyre, Carlie Reid, Amanda Best, Tanya Edwards, Natalia Oros and Fernando Lago.

As the meal progressed, the guests were entertained by well-known and talented local duo Masquerade.