Halifax 3% ISA - Low Payment

cornrob

Morning,

I just check my ISA for todays interest and found I only got £27.57.

This is on the Direct Reward 4 @ 3%

I filled the ISA to £5,100

Is it just me or is that very wrong?

thanks all

Baldur

cornrob wrote: »

Morning,

I just check my ISA for todays interest and found I only got £27.57.

This is on the Direct Reward 4 @ 3%

I filled the ISA to £5,100

Is it just me or is that very wrong?

When you say you paid in the maximum £5,100, when did you pay it in?

You are only paid interest on the daily balance in your ISA, so if you paid in in dribs & drabs, the payment could be correct.

cornrob

Baldur wrote: »

When you say you paid in the maximum £5,100, when did you pay it in?

You are only paid interest on the daily balance in your ISA, so if you paid in in dribs & drabs, the payment could be correct.

It was in January i filled.

lyndasharp

My husband got £18 interest on his £3600 ISA of the same type. He opened it just at the end of the previous tax year (i.e. early April 10) and put in the full amount. It now says it is receiving 0.5% interest. I can only assume they dropped the interest rate on the 6th April 2010, as that amount of interest would be right for the 0.5% rate. We were expecting to get a full year at the 3% rate so are really annoyed!!!! We'll be putting in a complaint to Halifax, though I expect they'll just tell us to get lost.

Could this also have happened to your ISA, cornrob?

edinburgher

It was in January i filled.

If the money was only there for 3 months this doesn't sound too bad - have you run it through a savings calculator?

Baldur

cornrob wrote: »

It was in January i filled.

£5,100 @ 3% earns roughly 42 pence per day, so your £27.57 equates to around 65/66 days interest (assuming that the full £5,100 was paid in in a single deposit).

If you paid the full amount in on 28th/29th January, the interest is about right.

blueberrypie

cornrob wrote: »

It was in January i filled.

So you've had the money in there for about two months.

Thus you'll get two months' worth of interest on it. You don't get paid interest for the time there was no money in the account.

The amount of interest you've received sounds right. 3% on £5100 is £153 - for a full year. Per month, that works out to about £12.75.

blueberrypie

lyndasharp wrote: »

My husband got £18 interest on his £3600 ISA of the same type. He opened it just at the end of the previous tax year (i.e. early April 10) and put in the full amount. It now says it is receiving 0.5% interest. I can only assume they dropped the interest rate on the 6th April 2010, as that amount of interest would be right for the 0.5% rate. We were expecting to get a full year at the 3% rate so are really annoyed!!!! We'll be putting in a complaint to Halifax, though I expect they'll just tell us to get lost.

The Direct Reward 4, which pays 3%, has only been available for a few weeks. I believe the Direct Reward issue that was available in March/April 2010 was paying 2.6%. You would need to find out exactly which ISA it was that your husband opened, and when, to determine whether the interest has been applied correctly.

bruirn

On a related note, I opened a Halifax 3% ISA for this tax year and transferred £8,984.03 from a previous Santander ISA. So far I have received two interests payments (one of £9.45 and another of £15.53), which I presume is correct.

My question is that I will be putting £1,000 a month into my Halifax current account, which will push my Halifax ISA up to 3.2%. When will this extra interest be applied? At the end of the year?

lyndasharp

blueberrypie wrote: »

The Direct Reward 4, which pays 3%, has only been available for a few weeks. I believe the Direct Reward issue that was available in March/April 2010 was paying 2.6%. You would need to find out exactly which ISA it was that your husband opened, and when, to determine whether the interest has been applied correctly.

Quite right, it wasn't a reward 4. It was the previous one, which was paying 2.8%.

blueberrypie

lyndasharp wrote: »

Quite right, it wasn't a reward 4. It was the previous one, which was paying 2.8%.

Halifax Direct Reward ISAs opened between 4 March and 21 September 2010 were offering 2.6%. The 2.8% account only became available on 22 September. That he seems to have received only 0.5% interest suggests that either he opened and ISA Saver Direct, or that the t&c for the Direct Reward ISA weren't complied with (which would mean the ISA Saver Direct interest rate and t&c would apply).

Either way, the interest rate on a Direct Reward ISA opened in early April 2010 would not have fallen to 0.5% on April 6th, 2010.

It's unlikely (though possible) that there has been an error in the interest calculation, but you really need to clarify exactly what happened and when before anyone can tell.