I have a cash ISA that I contribute regularly to with my bank, and they have just dropped the interest rate. Can I just close it and open another with someone else, or is it more complicated than that
LC
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Yes you can - you will need to find a provider who will accept this, and you need to move all the money you have paid in during the current tax year at the same time.
More info here - www.investmentuk.org/FactSheets/ISAs/isafactsheet.pdf
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You can "transfer" it to another cash ISA but you can't close it down and in effect retain it and also start a new one as you can only have one cash ISA each tax year. Check out thisismoney dot co dot uk there's quite a bit of good advice there and some comparison tables to see who is paying the better rates and what the transfer charges are likely to be and consequently whether its worth doing or not. Interest rates on cash ISAs aren't great but its a safe place to be. I've stopped paying into mine and switched to paying into a stocks and shares ISA - you can have both in one tax year.
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Lamb chops - I strongly advise that you consult a financial adviser before moving any money around at the moment, particularly stocks and shares. Remember stocks and shares can go down as well as up ( and frequently do..... )
Whilst the experience here is not to be spurned , you should take proper advice to keep your money safe. How long do you want your money tied up for?
Frankly SWMBO and I have some money ( 10 -20 K ) which was planned to go into S & S ISA for this year but I am holding off using my allowance as I really do not consider them to be a good investment at the moment.
A financial adviser to my brother in law who has just retired was unable to think of anything safe that is likely to get him more than 1.25% on his money ..... so he has just gone out and ordered a new Audi Q5......
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@ Retpocileh
I'd love to have the advice of an IFA and I have no qualms about paying for one.
However, finding one in in our part of the world who isn't limited to advising you on a limited range of products and is interested in the relatively small amounts we have to invest .... well there is more chance of finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow
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The last thing IFA's are is independent, in the sense of impartial, if you are paying no fees. Most dislike fee based work and fees are prohibitively expensive for small amounts of money.
As to advice on stocks and shares - the professionals are not much better than the rest of us at stock picking, which is arguably a waste of time and money that only serves to generate profits for the financial services industry (the people who made the most money in the gold rush were the ones selling picks and shovels). Nor are the professionals much better at timing the markets.
I strongly recommend a book by Tim Hale - 'Smarter Investing'. It won't make the decisions for you but you will know a lot more about how to make them, and how to avoid losing 5% straight off the top to the intermediaries. The cost will be a tiny fraction of that of letting an IFA 'invest' your money.
You don't have to take my word for it- read the reviews.
www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0273722077
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>> You can "transfer" it to another cash ISA but you can't close it down and
>> in effect retain it and also start a new one as you can only have
>> one cash ISA each tax year.
My understanding is that you can only open one cash ISA each tax year. You can have more than one cash ISA.
www.moneysupermarket.com/c/news/new-isa-rules-explained/0006456/
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NeilS is right, you need to "transfer" not close and open. That might provoke the tax man's ineterest.
Just decide on a new provider, get a form from them, and they will sort it out.
JH
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With a cash ISA, you don't need an adviser - loads of information on the best deals is available in the media or on the Interweb, it just requires some graft to find the best deal.
Agree that if you're looking at equity or similar investment then you need to be either well aware of the risks or be able to get some good advice.
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Retpocileh, he is moving the cash in an interest bearing account. Scarcely something that requires the expensive input of an IFA.
Your brother's financial adviser obviously is useless if he can come up with nothing better than 1.25%.
Santander will give 3.75% fixed bond over two years.
Sainsburys pay 2.7% on an easy access account.
Or HM Government will give you tax free - if you buy savings certificates - indexation + 1% which looks like good value for the next couple of years at least, with VAT rises coming in. If paying tax at 40%, and assuming an inflation rate of 2.5%, that's equating to nearly a 6% effective return.
Which about compares with a stocks and shares ISA made up of some high-yielding blue chips - BAT, Shell, Astra Zeneca, Scottish and Southern Energy etc. etc. etc.
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OK, Ten weeks ago, I closed one ISA and opened another, transferring the balance and setting up a direct debit into the next ISA.
This DD has not been acted on, even though a large chunk of money was moved from my old account to my new account, and my old bank have received the DD mandate from my new bank.
What the new bank are telling me is that the cheque transferring the balance was not from my personal account (at a guess it was from some sort of bank's clearing account)
I'm not best pleased, as they haven't bothered to raise the issue with me, and i've lost two months worth of interest and an awful lot of confidence in the bank.
I have been told by my old bank that it is standard practice when transferring ISA's that this must be done by cheque, and they are a very big bank, so I guess whet they do works for them
Has anybody else had this sort of issue, and how did they get it sorted ?
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Give them 7 days to sort it and then go straight to the Financial Services Ombudsman and complain. You can do it on line, it is free, and it is 4 pages of A4 of which only one will apply to you.
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Having finally brought this issue to a close, dare I advise against having anything to do with the Principality Building Society... (no, Wales, not Monaco)
Much as I understand for security around financial matters, an organisation that can only communicate over the net via secure messaging for even the most mundane of messages has lost site of the service they are trying to provide.
Yesterday I had an email saying there was an imporant message I had to log on to read - what was this high-security message - 'your statement is ready'. How many good reasons are there that this has to be a secure message - none that i can think of.
Oh, and if they are telling me exactly how much is in my account, why to they insist on telling me 'there are insufficient funds to allow this' when I try to withdraw it
and why, when I chose to close the account, do they only allow this to be done (this is called the E-ISA account, but the way) by them sending a cheque through the post ?
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>>... dare I advise against having anything to do with...
Just be careful where you jump to.
Things with Iberian roots defy description.
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>> Things with Iberian roots defy description.
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You mean that organisation constantly lambasted by that frightening Jessica Gorst-Hyphen woman in the saturday Telegraph as constantly having appaling service... no chance ! Amazing they are still having problems they ascribe to taking over other business must be, what, two or more years ago now
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Santander must have the worst internet reputation of any business.
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ISA question - wilco
