Mov ing an ISA

[Im a BusyBee]

ive been told by a colleague that its possible to move the money in my ISA from the account its in to an ISA account with a different bank. i thought once its in an ISA thats where it stays and i can only put my personal allowance in aditionally each year?

[kempie]

It is a feature of ISAs that they are transferable between providers...

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/ISA/transfer-isa.htm

[factor-fiction]

You can transfer ISAs, but whether you do a transfer or not you can only put in �3600 into cash iSAs in any one tax year.

If you have already paid ipart of your annual allowance into one cash ISA you can transfer your ISA nd pay in the balance of your annual allowance. But you cannot pay into two separate live ISAs in one tax year.

Make sure you transfer. You can't close your ISA after making contributions this year and then open a new ISA and pay the money in.

Kempie's link is a good one

[Im a BusyBee]

thanks for both your answers...i have put my 3600 into an isa - i do this every year on 6th april. this yr i opened a new account with a different bank. all previous years were just added to the same isa account each april so i have quite a lump there now.however this is not getting as good return as deals currently available so i guess the answer yes i can transfer it to a new account of my choice by using the form on kempie's link??

[New Judge]

All of the above is correct. You can transfer your ISA to another provider.

However, one factor to consider is that there will almost certainly be a delay between your funds leaving the first account and hitting the second. During this time you will suffer loss of interest for a period and this needs to be factored in to your calculations.

I recently transferred my cash ISA from a small building society to the Halifax. They were offering 6.4% fixed for four years. (I believe this has now gone down to 6.0%). The transfer took over a month to finally complete, although I lost interest for only about three weeks, so it was still a good deal.

There have been a few articles in the money press recently about this. The process is not supposed to take more than 28 days but there have been some reports of transfers taking up to three months. There has been no satisfactory explanation from the banks, except to highlight the problem that because of government rules surrounding the issue, the transfers have to be accomplished by banks sending cheques to each other instead of using the CHAPS system. This does not explain all of the delay, however. The real reason may be more sinister as, after all, the money is somewhere all the time the transfer is being processed.

It should not be a big deal but you should realise that if you lose all interest at (say) 5% for one month, it is the equivalent to your annual rate being reduced by more than 0.4% for that year.

[factor-fiction]

Grea point nejudge. I also had to forgo 2 weeks interest on a transfer

[factor-fiction]

sorry, got your name wrong newjudge