MSE News: Budget 2015: ISAs to become fully flexible with withdrawals allowed

colsten

masonic wrote: »

When you look at the higher rate / lower balance ones, the gross benefit on offer is of the order £100

Taking Santander 123. 3% (near enough) of £20K is £600 [cost to Santander] a year, every year. That's just one account, some of us have more than one, up to 4 sole ones in some cases.

Taking Club Lloyds. 4% (near enough) of £5K is £200 [cost to Lloyds] a year, every year. Plus those silly Club Lloyds benefits (I have just renewed mine for year 2). And joint accounts.

Taking BOS Vantage. 3% (near enough) of 3 x £5K is £450 [cost to BOS] a year, every year.

Etc etc.

A lot more than the customary £100 - £150 "catch a new customer" expense in many cases.

masonic

colsten wrote: »

A lot more than the customary £100 - £150 "catch a new customer" expense in many cases.

It would be fairer to take the difference between the 3%, 4% or 5% on offer and the typical easy access no bonus rate of 1.25% to calculate the value of the free money being pumped into these accounts. This would put the value of the benefits at:

TSB: £75
Nationwide: £94
Lloyds: £137
Halifax: £60 (as no balance is required)

I mentioned Santander already (see above) as being an outlier and the possible reasons. BOS, perhaps, is in a similar boat of simply needing the customers more than the four above, hence paying out an added benefit of £263 (assuming you have 3 accounts). The fact you can still open 3 accounts at BOS, whereas the others who used to offer multiple accounts have clamped down supports this.

Personally, I haven't bothered with any of the 3% paying accounts. There are enough paying 4%+ to cover all of my cash.

Perhaps you didn't read the words "higher rate / lower balance ones" in my post above?

jimjames

And all those calcs assume the accounts are fully funded. I bet outside of mse the numbers who do that are pretty low.

colsten

masonic wrote: »

I mentioned Santander already (see above) as being an outlier and the possible reasons.

You did, and I said that 3% on £20K is a lot more than the £100 you suggest people can make from switching, if they have £20K.

You are right to say people can make £100 from switching, and I am right to say people can make a lot more from having £20K in Santander.

I suppose you and I should just stop 'disagreeging' over totally different things as we might find that we actually violently agree most times

iwant2asave

colsten wrote: »

You did, and I said that 3% on £20K is a lot more than the £100 you suggest people can make from switching, if they have £20K.

You are right to say people can make £100 from switching, and I am right to say people can make a lot more from having £20K in Santander.

I suppose you and I should just stop 'disagreeging' over totally different things as we might find that we actually violently agree most times

Indeed, mse forums would be far more productive if no one was interested in proving themselves right...it usually ends up in pages of discussions where each party conveniently quotes each other out of context.... MoneySavingEgos :-)

masonic

iwant2asave wrote: »

Indeed, mse forums would be far more productive if no one was interested in proving themselves right...it usually ends up in pages of discussions where each party conveniently quotes each other out of context.... MoneySavingEgos :-)

I actually think the cases where people deliberately misrepresent what others have said are quite rare. It is much more often the case that there is a genuine misunderstanding of the alternative view presented. When you have a certain idea or view in mind, then it is easy to overlook small details that were put into the opposing argument and misunderstand the context, for example. What flows from there, I would suggest, is not the opponent's ego-driven need to prove themselves correct, but the simple and natural desire to make themselves understood correctly.

I've been involved in my fair share of threads that have descended into out and out squabbling, and clearly that isn't productive, but on the other hand if people simply disengage at the first sign of disagreement, then neither party is likely to learn anything from the discussion.

iwant2asave

masonic wrote: »

I actually think the cases where people deliberately misrepresent what others have said are quite rare. It is much more often the case that there is a genuine misunderstanding of the alternative view presented. When you have a certain idea or view in mind, then it is easy to overlook small details that were put into the opposing argument and misunderstand the context, for example. What flows from there, I would suggest, is not the opponent's ego-driven need to prove themselves correct, but the simple and natural desire to make themselves understood correctly.

I've been involved in my fair share of threads that have descended into out and out squabbling, and clearly that isn't productive, but on the other hand if people simply disengage at the first sign of disagreement, then neither party is likely to learn anything from the discussion.

OK...agree to disagree...handshake....let's get back to the moneysaving!

usermdc

Any progress on the "new flexible Cash ISAs" due this autumn? Also, I presume that the flexibility applies to any Cash ISAs that you hold at the time despite words like "the introduction of more flexible ISAs" being open to interpretation that it only applies to new Cash ISAs to be introduced at the time. Which is correct?

Separately, whilst most articles indicate that you can only open one Cash ISA each year, one leading provider has advised me that I can open a 2nd with them this year since the rule applies to providers rather than ISAs. Which is correct?

masonic

usermdc wrote: »

Separately, whilst most articles indicate that you can only open one Cash ISA each year, one leading provider has advised me that I can open a 2nd with them this year since the rule applies to providers rather than ISAs. Which is correct?

Your ISA provider is correct. They can report all of your ISA accounts held with them as being a single ISA.

ceredigion

usermdc wrote: »

Separately, whilst most articles indicate that you can only open one Cash ISA each year, one leading provider has advised me that I can open a 2nd with them this year since the rule applies to providers rather than ISAs. Which is correct?

Not sure which articles you have being reading, probably by professional financial journalists no doubt . But you are misinformed. The rules say you can only pay in to one ISA in one financial year. How ever you can transfer previous years allowance's to other providers as many times you feel fit. You could even split an old ISA in two and send to different providers. This years subscriptions can be transferred but must stay together. As you can see it is vary possible to open more than one cash ISA each year.