Nationwide ISA - can't pay in!

Astarte_2

Hi all,

I'm hoping someone might be able to give me some advice.

First a bit of background: I have an existing ISA that I opened years ago and transferred to Cheshire a couple of years ago. Cheshire were taken over by Nationwide a couple of months ago, so my ISA is now a Nationwide one.

I went to transfer some money into it last week, only to find that the money bounced straight back into my current account. The message that came up on my current account was something along the lines of 'payee account not accepting transfers'. My current account is linked with the ISA and the account details I was using were correct so I emailed Nationwide to ask them what was wrong.

They emailed me back to say that because I hadn't paid in to my ISA for a while, I would have to fill in an 'ISA renewal form'. This turned out to be a form which meant I would have to subscribe to the Nationwide ISA for this tax year as if it was a new ISA. Trouble is, I have already opened a new ISA this tax year.

Can Nationwide do this? I thought if you had an existing ISA from a previous year you could pay into that one as well as opening another one in the current tax year?

badger09

Astarte wrote: »

They emailed me back to say that because I hadn't paid in to my ISA for a while, I would have to fill in an 'ISA renewal form'. This turned out to be a form which meant I would have to subscribe to the Nationwide ISA for this tax year as if it was a new ISA. Trouble is, I have already opened a new ISA this tax year.

Can Nationwide do this?

Yes they can, and in fact it is the norm if you haven't paid into a cash ISA for some time.

Astarte wrote: »

Trouble is, I have already opened a new ISA this tax year.

Can Nationwide do this? I thought if you had an existing ISA from a previous year you could pay into that one as well as opening another one in the current tax year?

You can pay into an existing ISA from a previous year aswell as opening a new one. What you can't do is pay into both at the same time.

Can I ask why you want to pay into both ISAs?

Also, how much is in the existing the ISA from previous years and how much you plan to pay between now and 5 April 2015?

jimjames

If you're paying in less than £10k and the ISA pays under 4% then they're doing you a favour by stopping paying in.

In simple terms you can't pay into 2 cash ISAs in the same year. Few exceptions but that's the basics.