I lost ₹2.2 lakh to FX markup over 5 years. The worst part — I never noticed.

I've been at Microsoft since 2019, currently a Director leading the Azure infrastructure team in Hyderabad. My MSFT RSUs vest quarterly via Fidelity NetBenefits. For the first three years, my process was simple: sell, wire home via Fidelity's international wire, move on.

I wasn't careless about money. I negotiate hotel rates, use fee-free cards abroad, track SIPs to the rupee. But somehow the RSU repatriation process had a blind spot.

The conversation that changed it

In late 2023, a colleague mentioned, almost in passing, that he'd switched brokers because of the FX spread on repatriation. I asked what he meant. He walked me through it: Fidelity's wire fee (around $25 per transfer), plus the spread between the interbank rate and the rate Fidelity actually gives you — typically 40 to 60 paise per dollar.

I went home that night and pulled five years of wire receipts.

The math was straightforward and painful. I'd been repatriating roughly $100,000 per year. At 44 paise average spread plus the wire fee converted to INR, I was losing approximately ₹44,000 per year. Over five years: ₹2.2 lakh. Gone. I had the receipts for every single one.

It wasn't fraud. Fidelity was doing exactly what they disclosed. I just hadn't read the disclosure carefully enough — or compared it to anything else.

Why I hadn't noticed

The spread doesn't appear as a line item. You see the USD amount you sent and the INR amount that arrived. The gap feels like rounding. Unless you benchmark it against the actual interbank rate at that moment — which nobody does manually — you never see it.

Moving to Rovia

I transferred my remaining MSFT lots to Rovia the following month. The process took about a week for the ACATS to settle, which is standard. No shares were sold in transit — the transfer is in-kind.

First repatriation on Rovia: zero platform FX markup. The money arrived at the interbank rate. I did the same benchmark calculation I'd done after that conversation with my colleague. The difference was exactly what Rovia had promised: ₹0.

I still use Fidelity for my future vests — Rovia doesn't replace where the RSUs land, it's where they live after they vest. I transfer within a day or two of each vest now.

What I'd tell my team

At Director level, most people on my team have been vesting for 3–5 years. They're repatriating significant amounts. Almost none of them have done this calculation. The next time someone on your team talks about RSUs, ask them what FX rate they're getting on repatriation. The answer is usually "I don't know." The math from there is almost always surprising.