Cash ISAs: The Best Currently Available List

fullhouse50

Further to the above, I have had a look at Principality Terms. ( I can post link ) 

You can transfer in and out without an issue. The only thing to bear in mind, is that if you make a subscription in that tax year, you must transfer out all of that subscription. 

This should therefore mean that for those who wish to jump ship, it should make it easier. 

bristolleedsfan

doodlector said:

Zopa Fixed 1yr ISA @ 5.46% - 90 day withdrawal penalty - no transfers
Zopa Fixed 2yr ISA @ 5.56% - 180 day withdrawal penalty - no transfers
Zopa Fixed 3yr ISA @ 5.51% - 270 day withdrawal penalty - no transfers

Zopa Fixed 5yr ISA - 5.26% 

JGal

bristolleedsfan said:

https://www.leedsbuildingsociety.co.uk/savings/isa-tax-free-accounts/ Topping 1-3 + 5 year

Opted for a Charter 1 year @ 5.2% last week then the Lloyd's @ 5.45% comes out (opened but not funded) followed by the Leeds @ 5.5%. Next interest rate meeting in 2.5 weeks. It's difficult knowing when to stick.

Shedman

fullhouse50 said:

Shedman said:

fullhouse50 said:

Quick question - Is one allowed to open multiple cash ISAs in each tax year, but keep the subscription below the £20k limit? The worry here is that if interest rates goes up, cash ISA providers wont raise their variable rates. Looking for easy access too

I have some £ sitting in a S+S ISA earning no interest - so would like to transfer the cash element to an ISA. 

If you want to do that you need to find a provider that offers a ISA portfolio or wallet approach i.e. your wallet is in effect your total ISA but you can choose to split the total in the wallet over a number of ISA products.  Examples of such providers are Paragon,Nationwide and Zopa (and there are some others)

I believe you can have multiple easy access ISAs with Paragon (so say £10k in each) but if you want to then transfer one lot of £10k to another provider in this same tax year you can't as you would have to move all £20k.  But you could move that £10k to a fixed ISA with Paragon later in this tax year should the rate look more attractive.

You cannot open multiple cash ISAs with different providers for current year subscriptions.

What tax year did you open your S&S ISA as anything you subscribed in previous tax years could be transferred to multiple Cash ISA providers (it would just be the current tax year subscription that would have to go to one provider although I am not sure how any dividends arising from current year subscriptions are treated )?

Thanks so much in coming back to me. I really want to just keep my shares with my current provider (HSBC). However, within the S+S ISA, I get dividends and I have topped it up in previous years (but not this current tax year). As a result of that, there is a reasonable cash balance getting no interest. The ISA provider (HSBC) have said that I am able to transfer out the cash element for free to another provider. That money is already within an ISA wrapper so it will not form part of my subscription this tax year. Even dividends paid out in the current tax year do not reduce the subscription allowance.  

I have just reviewed the term Portfolio ISA (Yet more confusing lingo here!)

What is a portfolio Isa?

(from which website) 

Normal Isa rules state that you can only pay into one of each type of Isa during one tax year; the only way to save into more than one would involve performing an Isa Transfer

A portfolio Isa - also known as a Isa Wallet - is a feature where savers are able to split their current £20,000 Isa allowance into more than one cash Isa.

For this to work, the cash Isas must all be held by the same provider, and the provider must be signed up for the portfolio Isa feature.

That way, HMRC only counts it as one cash Isa account - regardless of how many cash Isas you open and pay into under the main account umbrella.

 

The way I have interpreted this, assume I put £20k into my usual S+S ISA for this current tax year. I then Open a new Cash ISA and request to transfer £20k from my S+S ISA. That is something that should be straight forward to do. If I then want to transfer that £20k from Cash ISA to another Cash ISA provider - again I would *assume* that is okay as I am not making a further contribution - just moving money for better rates. Though I could be completely wrong. 

Hope I have made some sense!

Not sure why you would bother putting this years subscription into the S&S ISA first and then transferring it out...why not put it straight into a Cash ISA?  You can always transfer back to the S&S ISA later on if you have put it into easy access Cash ISAs. 

An alternative to moving cash from your S&S ISA in order to gain some interest (maybe whilst you wait for the right time to put it back into shares/funds) would be to keep it in the ISA but invest the cash in some Money Market funds or ETFs instead.  Currently they are returning around 4% or so.  There are some threads in the main Savings and Investment subforum discussing these.

jaceyboy

Took mine out of Shawbrook and transferred to Paragon, today Shawbrook have put their rate up and beaten Paragon

uk1

Has anyone discovered or know of a limit to the number of times within the 14 day cooling off period that the online Virgin fixed term ISA can be changed before there is an objection of any sort?  I’m thinking of the next BOE meeting to decide interest rates and Virgin seems keen at the moment to be responsive.  

refluxer

JGal said:

bristolleedsfan said:

https://www.leedsbuildingsociety.co.uk/savings/isa-tax-free-accounts/ Topping 1-3 + 5 year

Opted for a Charter 1 year @ 5.2% last week then the Lloyd's @ 5.45% comes out (opened but not funded) followed by the Leeds @ 5.5%. Next interest rate meeting in 2.5 weeks. It's difficult knowing when to stick.

When it comes to transfers, I'm normally of the mind that you might as well fix at the best rate available at the time of looking otherwise you risk losing out by staying on a maturity/easy access rate, however that only really works when rises are slow and steady - rates are rising so quickly at the moment that I'm thinking that advice isn't quite so relevant now.

And I'm talking from experience - some of the fixes I took out as recently as March/April of this year (which were top rates at the time) are already getting close to being beaten by easy access rates.

For context - if fixed rates continue to increase at the rate they have been for the last 2 weeks, a one year fix will be around 6% by the end of this month !

t1redmonkey

uk1 said:

Has anyone discovered or know of a limit to the number of times within the 14 day cooling off period that the online Virgin fixed term ISA can be changed before there is an objection of any sort?  I’m thinking of the next BOE meeting to decide interest rates and Virgin seems keen at the moment to be responsive.  

Well Virgin themselves are the ones who told me about this when I initially phoned them a couple months ago asking some questions about their cooling off period, so I don't think it's something they mind people doing.  The guy told me you can keep switching to the new rate as long as you are within the 14 days and retain all the interest earned, so that convinced me to go with Virgin at the time. 

Since then I think I've done it 5 or 6 times, purely because they keep increasing their rate within 14 days every time.  Think they cut it fine recently when they went 13 days before raising the rate.  But I think generally the management at Virgin Money seem to be want to position themselves at or very near the top of the rates tables on cash ISAs, so they seem a safe bet to go with in the current environment where rate expectations keep changing.

LoopySnooker

t1redmonkey said:

uk1 said:

Has anyone discovered or know of a limit to the number of times within the 14 day cooling off period that the online Virgin fixed term ISA can be changed before there is an objection of any sort?  I’m thinking of the next BOE meeting to decide interest rates and Virgin seems keen at the moment to be responsive.  

Well Virgin themselves are the ones who told me about this when I initially phoned them a couple months ago asking some questions about their cooling off period, so I don't think it's something they mind people doing.  The guy told me you can keep switching to the new rate as long as you are within the 14 days and retain all the interest earned, so that convinced me to go with Virgin at the time. 

Since then I think I've done it 5 or 6 times, purely because they keep increasing their rate within 14 days every time.  Think they cut it fine recently when they went 13 days before raising the rate.  But I think generally the management at Virgin Money seem to be want to position themselves at or very near the top of the rates tables on cash ISAs, so they seem a safe bet to go with in the current environment where rate expectations keep changing.

Does this mean that I can simply log in and open the new 1 Year Fixed Rate E-ISA Issue 606 at 5.45% and just choose to transfer in the Fixed Rate E-ISA Issue 603 which I opened earlier this week ?

uk1

LoopySnooker said:

t1redmonkey said:

uk1 said:

Has anyone discovered or know of a limit to the number of times within the 14 day cooling off period that the online Virgin fixed term ISA can be changed before there is an objection of any sort?  I’m thinking of the next BOE meeting to decide interest rates and Virgin seems keen at the moment to be responsive.  

Well Virgin themselves are the ones who told me about this when I initially phoned them a couple months ago asking some questions about their cooling off period, so I don't think it's something they mind people doing.  The guy told me you can keep switching to the new rate as long as you are within the 14 days and retain all the interest earned, so that convinced me to go with Virgin at the time. 

Since then I think I've done it 5 or 6 times, purely because they keep increasing their rate within 14 days every time.  Think they cut it fine recently when they went 13 days before raising the rate.  But I think generally the management at Virgin Money seem to be want to position themselves at or very near the top of the rates tables on cash ISAs, so they seem a safe bet to go with in the current environment where rate expectations keep changing.

Does this mean that I can simply log in and open the new 1 Year Fixed Rate E-ISA Issue 606 at 5.45% and just choose to transfer in the Fixed Rate E-ISA Issue 603 which I opened earlier this week ?

Exactly what I have just done for my wife and myself.  Took a couple of minutes.  In 13 days you could reapply for a 2 year to nudge the date forward.