H&L restricting LISAs?

Legacy_user

Since late last week, H&L's LISA has returned "Thank you. Unfortunately you cannot top up this account online as you are over 40." when trying to top-up online. I asked H&L support about this:

We are aware of an issue where if you are over 40, you are unable to proceed into topping up an HL Lifetime ISA online. We have raised this with our IT Team as a matter of urgency where we hope to resolve this as soon as practicable. Please accept my apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Should you wish to top up your Lifetime ISA you are able to contact our Client Support Team on 0117 980 9950 to make a payment via debit card over the telephone, alternatively you can send in a cheque

When I pressed them (last week) for a time-frame on fixing the issue, I was basically told that there is no time-frame and to read the last message (i.e. phone us to top-up). It's not massively helpful when I prefer to manage my account online.

It seems a simple calculation problem - just add on an extra 10 years (should be over 50, not over 40, as per standard LISA limitations).

Is this H&L limiting access to LISAs in light of the recent suggestion that LISAs are not popular and should be binned off??

Alexland

Sounds like a software bug that they may need to update code, test etc before releasing an update. Did you make your initial contribution before 40?

xylophone

It's not massively helpful when I prefer to manage my account online.

Can you make regular payments by DD?

fun4everyone

It is just a bug and if you phone them up you can make the contribution.

System

I contribute via Direct Debit (no issues - yet), but when the LISA bonus arrives, I top it up to £100 and invest it. I started investing before 40, so that's not an issue. Yes I can phone them up but that sort of defeats the point of an online account. "My car won't start... but it's okay - I can push it". I'm just wondering if there's something more going on. I work in IT - it doesn't take a week to fix a critical software bug. Something like this should be sorted in hours, not weeks.

eskbanker

JohnWadkin wrote: »

It seems a simple calculation problem - just add on an extra 10 years (should be over 50, not over 40, as per standard LISA limitations).

JohnWadkin wrote: »

I work in IT - it doesn't take a week to fix a critical software bug. Something like this should be sorted in hours, not weeks.

If you work in IT then chances are you'll be familiar with the sort of person who has absolutely no idea of how long it takes to make changes to software and/or the processes involving in specifying, designing, building, testing (in all its forms and iterations) and releasing software with config control, etc, with all the requisite levels of sign-off, etc, especially in a highly regulated industry that doesn't have its reputational problems to seek in terms of the quality of its systems! You're also assuming that this is 'critical', but HL may not see it that way and may have plenty of issues that are way more significant to address....

JohnWadkin wrote: »

I'm just wondering if there's something more going on.

If you're serious about some sort of conspiracy theory whereby they're deliberately trying to restrict contributions, I'd suggest that you keep your imagination in check!

short_butt_sweet

JohnWadkin wrote: »

It seems a simple calculation problem - just add on an extra 10 years (should be over 50, not over 40, as per standard LISA limitations).

it's not quite that simple. they need 2 separate tests, for whether somebody can make their first subscription into a LISA (under 40), and whether they can subscribe more money into a LISA (under 50, and have previously subscribed into the LISA - or is it that there is currently a balance of at least 1p in the LISA? i don't even know).

then, do they have proper testing for this? e.g. check that a 39-year-old can open a LISA and subscribe, fast forward until they are over 40 and check that they can subscribe more, then fast forward until they're over 50 and check that they can't subscribe more. this requires a good testing framework, in which they can advance the date artificially for testing purposes to see what happens. and presumably they don't have all this in place, or they'd have got this right first time.

Is this H&L limiting access to LISAs in light of the recent suggestion that LISAs are not popular and should be binned off??

pretty sure HL like LISAs because they offer them and most of their competitors don't.

londoninvestor

short_butt_sweet wrote: »

this requires a good testing framework, in which they can advance the date artificially for testing purposes to see what happens. and presumably they don't have all this in place, or they'd have got this right first time.

Not to mention checking nothing else gets broken in the process.

Alexland

There's a good video interviewing the HL head of software development if anyone is really interested.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0cKcjsFGsA

triplea35

I read that HL had around 30,000 LISA accounts opened, a small amount, compared to cash Lisa's elsewhere and the total amount of accounts they manage.
Out of those accounts opened what percentage will have turned 40 in the last few years and encountering this problem?
I'm sure HL will fix it sooner than later and would give it greater priority if they were being inundated with telephone contributions.

Alexland

HL probably have more accounts now but a rough calculation (in absence of any data on HL customer age distribution) wound suggest around 2.4% of 18-39 year olds last tax year will have turned 40 in the past 6 months so might have hit this bug when they resubscribed to their LISA this year.