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I opened an account 17 months ago at "AMK" MFI - a sizable amount at a fixed 36 month CD in riel. Just recently I discovered that I meant to open a 24 month CD - not a 36 month one. I sat down with a very helpful bank manager and she said that she would speak to her superiors and get back to me soon. Two days later she wrote a detailed e-mail explaining that they would be glad to change the term and adjust the APR accordingly.

In effect, she saved me a substantial amount of $$ if I had to cash the CD in early (all long-term CD's have early termination % penalties understandably). The process was easy and direct. They certainly were not obligated to do what they did. In gratitude, I opened another CD (lesser amount) because I feel that AMK was surprisingly open to negotiation and resolving any problems that might arise.

In a Western bank "back home" there is no way that they would have worked with me on this - resulting decidedly in my favour. Once you sign those CD's that's it. Period. I was impressed and obviously thankful that AMK proved that Cambodia can be a wonderful place sometimes.

You got a real break there, good of you to post the details.

A few days ago I walked into one of the MFIs for the first time and also inquired about their riel accounts, As the interest rates were always just 1% above those in dollar denominations. The lady I spoke to explained that accounts in riel were mostly for lower amounts as otherwise the figures would be "too big".

I laughed it off but when I inquired about their current exchange rates, these were the worst I had ever ever seen, with a spread of about 3%. She told me I could either bring in riel in cash or transfer it from another account.

The best rates to my knowledge are from street vendors and smallish shops, for example today I noticed something like 4043 and 4052 as selling and buying rates, thus a very low spread of about 25 basis points. But I'm not about to go and change several thousand dollars at one of those vendors. So how did you do it , what's your solution to convert $ into riel and back to justify a riel deposit vs one in $ ?

There are some very reliable money changers. The other day i cashed in 130 millions riels in one go and went to a money changer i know to change them back to dollars without an issue (I told them a day in advance) then came back to the bank to put the dollars in a saving account, saving myself about 200$. A few bills weren't to their liking, the money changer took them back.
As for the handling of a big suitcase of riel (mainly 20000 and 10000 denominations),knowing the bills came from a MFI, the money changer didn't even bother to count them or check them... But I know them for a long time.


As for my motives i managed a 12% return over 12 months (10% former best rate at Amret + 2% exchange rate gain as it was 18 months contract and there is seasonal predictable rate variation.

what the fuck u doing with 130 mil riels>
playing the money exchange game?

phuketrichard wrote:what the fuck u doing with 130 mil riels>
playing the money exchange game?

Buy beer or course, what else? And you can a lot of beer for that amount!

As I said that was only for maximizing return purposes.
What amazed me is that I did the currency exchange in SHV and was applied the same as rate as in PP maybe even better. She also had to borrow money for it as she didn't have the full amount in dollars. Bear in mind that the deal was made while the riel was slipping against the $.

After giving it some thought as this didn't make much sense, we concluded that it might not be very easy for an individual in the province to put his hand on a large chunk of riels. The said individual with business connections could have benefited from it by doing a triangular business deal involving rice or another commodity priced in riel.

Barang_doa_slae wrote:As I said that was only for maximizing return purposes.
What amazed me is that I did the currency exchange in SHV and was applied the same as rate as in PP maybe even better. She also had to borrow money for it as she didn't have the full amount in dollars. Bear in mind that the deal was made while the riel was slipping against the $.

After giving it some thought as this didn't make much sense, we concluded that it might not be very easy for an individual in the province to put his hand on a large chunk of riels. The said individual with business connections could have benefited from it by doing a triangular business deal involving rice or another commodity priced in riel.

Tell us again: what months of the year is the exchange rate at 4200KHR:$1 ? Your right for a couple of months each year it gets to that (roughly) but I can't say I remember which months are the best. And when is it lowest (4000KHR:$1)
I have a few MFI term accounts and plan to open a few more. If I knew when the high and lows were I could open different terms to coincide with these periods.
Cheers