Can I open another Savings account?

sa2688

Hello,
I have a Help to Buy ISA with Natwest, am I allowed to open a high interest (If there are any) savings account alongside the Help to Buy ISA? If so are there any conditions I need to be aware of, of having 2 ISA's opened at once?
Many thanks.

eskbanker

sa2688 said:

I have a Help to Buy ISA with Natwest, am I allowed to open a high interest (If there are any) savings account alongside the Help to Buy ISA? If so are there any conditions I need to be aware of, of having 2 ISA's opened at once?

The general rule is that you can only pay new money into one ISA of each type in any tax year, so if you're paying into a HTB ISA (a subtype of cash ISA) then you can't concurrently pay into another cash ISA.

NatWest is one of the few providers who allow you to pay into multiple cash ISAs with them as if they were one, i.e. effectively working around the above rule, so that would be an option, but their cash ISA interest rates are much worse than the competition so it's unlikely to be sensible.

Chances are your best bet will be to use a non-ISA account for your surplus savings, as the personal savings allowance means that you're unlikely to pay tax on the interest income unless you have significant non-ISA savings.

Alternatively, you may wish to consider if Lifetime ISA might be worth using instead of HTB?