ISA options /transfer to new provider

taper

Morning
I am getting confused on the ISA rules so after some guidance please.
I currently have a stocks and shares ISA with Nutmeg, which I’ve had for a few years and pay £100 p/m into it. Current balance is about £4K.
I also have a cash ISA with Santander with a balance of £48k which is fixed at 2% and matures 1st July 2021.
I have read good reviews about Vanguard and would like to open an ISA with them. I am looking to increase my monthly savings to £300 pm. I don’t think I can do this at the moment though as I am paying £100 pm to Nutmeg? Do I have to wait until April? When my cash ISA matures can I transfer this balance into the Vanguard account and would you recommend doing that? 

Thanks 😊 

eskbanker

You can only pay new money into one ISA of each type in any tax year, so you can't pay into a second S&S ISA until 6 April, but if you did you'd have to stop paying into Nutmeg from then on, unless you transferred the Nutmeg one into the new one to keep all current year money together.

In terms of Vanguard, it's unclear whether you're impressed by their platform or their investments - if the latter then you can buy those via any mainstream platform, although their own platform is quite cheap for doing so.

Cash ISAs are generally fairly poor value but it typically doesn't make sense to shift all of that pot into S&S unless you retain enough accessible cash for your emergency rainy day fund....

Alexland

The asset allocation in Vanguard's LifeStrategy fund series is very similar to the Nutmeg's Fixed Portfolios so I wouldn't continue with Nutmeg and save at least 0.30% ongoing charges by asking Vanguard to transfer-in the Nutmeg ISA however they would need to sell down the underlying ETFs to cash so you would have some time out of the market (during which it could go up or down) until you could reinvest with Vanguard. Still might be better to get that done now while the account is fairly small and market movements don't matter so much.