ISA Transfers To Get Quicker

Oblivion

Sorry if this is already old news.

A number of news feeds have reported this week that the banks and building societies, who are well aware of the critism about delays in transferring ISAs, have agreed on a new set of guidelines to speed up these transfers.

Details still seem to be a bit thin on the ground, but 'thisismoney' says in their report ...



"Under the new guidelines, they will be able to use a standard form to make sure that vital details are not omitted.

Savers who want to transfer should go to their new Isa provider, which will fill in the form and be responsible for handling any problems. They should not have to contact their old Isa provider.

The form should be passed to the bank's main processing centre within two days, and within another four days the request should be passed to your old provider.

They then have ten business days to send a cheque to your new provider.
If your existing provider is likely to miss this deadline, they will let you know. And if they don't send the cheque, your new provider should automatically chase them up.

While these guidelines should help to avoid some of the chaos of recent months, they are not ideal, because they also allow the new provider five days to credit the cheque to your new account, which means savers could miss interest.

And the fact that they are only guidelines means banks and building societies can ignore them and not face any sanctions. The next step will be to ditch old-fashioned and slow methods of transferring money. British Bankers' Association chief executive Angela Knight says: 'The industry has taken decisive action to resolve some of the immediate issues facing customers.
'Now we are moving our focus to the longer term to ensure the Isa transfer process is robust and efficient for customers.' John Brasington, chairman of the Tax Incentivised Savings Association, adds: 'These measures provide a welcome impact on the transfer process.
'The next step is to investigate how electronic solutions can ensure further improvements. A working party has been established to develop a suitable process.' "

The fact that these are only guidelines and that those who fail to comply will not face sanctions is a bit of a let-down, but hopefully none of the banks and building societies will want to be named and shamed, so we may see some significant improvements in transfer speeds.

Dave.

Ian_W

Working Lunch did a report on it yesterday. Programme for 28/8/08 can be viewed on the BBC iplayer - HERE.

They've had a large negative viewer feedback about ISA transfers [mirrors comments on here] and have been covering it on and off for quite a few months.

We'll see what happens in April!!

Hungerdunger

Moneybox on Radio 4 will also be talking about it (Saturday lunchtime)

Milarky

Looking at the details reported above, I would say that the proposals are not good enough. Even if widely adopted things need to go further. The main concern ISA customers have is interest - so therefore (knowing this perfectly well) why wouldn't any industry-wide initiative to seeking to improve transfer times not also seek to extend the practice of individual providers at present to pay interest from the date after the ISA leaves the old provider? That smacks somehow of the worst kind of penny pinching. As I say, customers are not really concerned 'where' the money is at any particular stage in the process (assuming they can trust the banks not to give it to someone else by mistake) so much as knowing that they will receive interest at all times.

[Are banks deliberately 'poor' at public relations or something?]

If you listened to the piece on Moneybox you will have heard it was said that lost-days interest will be covered under this 'scheme'. (This will get the Chancellor's nuts out of the cracker, I suppose)

baby_boomer

In the age of fast electronic transfers, I wonder why they always use a cheque and second class post, usually sent on Friday :rolleyes: ?