Portfolio contribution help.

Watsy

My situation over the years is that I opened 2 SS ISAs in different years (one with Nationwide and one with Britannia) and being the complete novice that I am have left them sitting over the years with no contributions.

Anyway, my plan was to choose a new fund* which I would open with an online provider and transfer my two old ISAs to the new provider so that I would have them in the same place.

I had also wanted to start making regular contributions to each of my funds* but as I understand I can only make contributions to one SS ISA per year which leaves me in a pickle.

Is there anyway to get round this as I'm sure it's a common occurrence where folks would like to contribute to their portfolio but have opened ISAs at various times in the past.


*Not sure if fund is the correct term to use but hopefully it makes sense in the context I use it.

westy22

Watsy wrote: »

and transfer my two old ISAs to the new provider so that I would have them in the same place.

Why would you transfer ISAs that have nothing in them? If, as you say, you opened them but made no contributions to them over the years then in reality they don't exist and have probably been closed by the providers already.

Watsy

Sorry westy, I wasn't very clear. I should have said I opened them with a lump sum and never made any further contributions over the years. One is worth £5k and the other £6k.

bowlhead99

As you say, you can only make your current-year contributions to one S&S ISA in a tax (unless you transfer that ISA to another provider and keep contributing to it once it has moved to the new place). There is no way to 'get around' the basic rule.

However, what you can certainly do is invest in an ISA from one provider which has multiple funds in it, so each month or every so often through ad-hoc chunks of new cash, you are buying a bit more of several different funds.

And as you have noted yourself, you can transfer the old ISAs into the new place where that new investment is happening, to have them all under one bigger wrapper. Your annual allowance is a cap on how much new money can go in, in one year, but you can bring old ISAs into your new account and have the whole portfolio in one place. This could be one or two or three funds or it could be ten funds all inside the wrapper. It could be funds, investment trusts, ETF trackers or individual shares.

If you have old ISAs with old funds in them which are available in the new place, you might be able to transfer them in "in specie" i.e. literally pick up the 100 units from the old provider and have them appear in your new account on the fund supermarket's platform. If the new platform doesn't provide access to those particular funds, you could sell them for cash and transfer the cash over so that the cash appears in the new account and then you buy a similar fund. To preserve the ISA status you have to let the ISA provider handle this for you, rather than manually take out the cash and move it yourself.

I think most here would agree that the funds on offer from banks and building societies are not that great - not very competitive in terms of fees and performance - so it is likely that you would benefit from bringing all your old money into the new ISA and starting again in terms of choice of investments.

There are whole threads dedicated to brokers/platforms that provide S&S ISAs - popular ones include TD Direct, iii, Charles Stanley Direct, Best Invest, Youinvest, Hargreaves Lansdown. The list goes on. Many of them have similar services but slightly different fee structures, so depending whether you're holding funds or individual shares, and how big your total pot is, and whether you're going to make regular contributions or more ad-hoc ones, you will probably find you can benefit by doing some window-shopping first.

Watsy

Thanks for the replies folks. Still doing my homework on which new broker bowlhead but leaning towards iii. They do seem to have my old funds available (AXA Distribution R Acc & L&G UK Select Equity A Acc) so as you say it would be a matter of getting them transferred over in specie.

They were pretty much chosen for me by the person I dealt with in each respective Building Society so if they aren't good offerings it may be better for me to sell them and choose something else. It's only now I'm taking a bit of an interest in things so I'd need to do some homework there too.