SHAWBROOK BANK ISA TRANSFER IN NIGHTMARE

simbak

I have been trying since end of April to get Shawbrook to transfer in cash held in a stocks and shares ISA with other providers. It has been a NIGHTMARE. I am at the end of my tether and their incompetence has me seriously concerned about Shawbrook as an institution. 

1) At the end of April I opened an ISA account and completed a transfer in form. The transfer is cash coming from a stocks and shares ISA held with Hargreaves Lansdown. After some days Shawbrook told me that HL rejected the transfer in request because "no account was found." When I spoke to HL they told the problem was that Shawbrook had submitted the request via BACS which cannot be used for transfers in from stocks & shares ISAs - HL told me this is not the first time Shawbrook have made this error. 

2) On 12/5 Shawbrook told me I didn't need to resubmit the forms - i.e they would use the original forms I sent. 

3) I chased them for progress and on 12/6 they told me I did need to resubmit the original forms after all. The customer service agent was simply unable to explain what had happened. 

4) I emailed the transfer in forms after that conversation on 12/6, requesting that they be dealt with ASAP. 

5) Today, I am told they haven't received them. The email address is 100% correct. 

6) On 6th June I emailed a detailed complaint to the customer care team, I have had no response. 

7) Is this something that the Financial Ombudsman would regard as worthy of his time ? At what point can I contact them ? 

searching4bestrates

I am sorry to hear you've had such a poor experience.

I guess my only question is are you certain it is Shawbrook Bank that is solely at fault, or is it in fact Hargreaves Lansdown? From what you've written it suggests that Hargreaves Lansdown is at least partially at fault too here?

The only reason I ask is that I've recently completed an ISA transfer to Shawbrook Bank (from Coventry Building Society) and my experience was overwhelmingly positive. The transfer was submitted on Friday 16th June and the transfer had completed by Tuesday 20th June.

eskbanker

simbak said:

6) On 6th June I emailed a detailed complaint to the customer care team, I have had no response. 

7) Is this something that the Financial Ombudsman would regard as worthy of his time ? At what point can I contact them ? 

You can escalate a complaint to FOS once you've received a final response from the institution, or if you haven't received this within eight weeks of logging it, so if you haven't had a satisfactory resolution by early August you can take it to FOS then.

simbak

searching4bestrates said:

I am sorry to hear you've had such a poor experience.

I guess my only question is are you certain it is Shawbrook Bank that is solely at fault, or is it in fact Hargreaves Lansdown? From what you've written it suggests that Hargreaves Lansdown is at least partially at fault too here?

The only reason I ask is that I've recently completed an ISA transfer to Shawbrook Bank (from Coventry Building Society) and my experience was overwhelmingly positive. The transfer was submitted on Friday 16th June and the transfer had completed by Tuesday 20th June.

100% it is Shawbrook at fault here. It really isn't complicated but Shawbrook don't appear to have procedures in place that staff understand for dealing with transfers from stocks and shares ISAs. Straightforward cash ISAs I've never had a problem with Shawbrook in the past. 

auser99

I'm 2months into trying to transfer an NS@I cash ISA to Shawbrook, so was going to post my own thread then saw this one.

I wonder if Shawbrook have issues with doing transfers of all types from my experience.

refluxer

auser99 said:

I'm 2months into trying to transfer an NS@I cash ISA to Shawbrook, so was going to post my own thread then saw this one.

I wonder if Shawbrook have issues with doing transfers of all types from my experience.

I've only experienced one transfer with Shawbrook but it was pretty fast - transferring in from Paragon took 4 days from opening the Shawbrook account to the transferred funds showing in online banking.

When both banks use the BACs ISA transfer service, transfers can be pretty quick like that. I would suspect that your issue is being caused by NS&I, who don't use that service and are spectacularly slow at processing far more simple banking tasks than an ISA transfer. 

auser99

refluxer said:

auser99 said:

I'm 2months into trying to transfer an NS@I cash ISA to Shawbrook, so was going to post my own thread then saw this one.

I wonder if Shawbrook have issues with doing transfers of all types from my experience.

I've only experienced one transfer with Shawbrook but it was pretty fast - transferring in from Paragon took 4 days from opening the Shawbrook account to the transferred funds showing in online banking.

When both banks use the BACs ISA transfer service, transfers can be pretty quick like that. I would suspect that your issue is being caused by NS&I, who don't use that service and are spectacularly slow at processing far more simple banking tasks than an ISA transfer. 

Yes you're probably spot on. My experience of trying to transfer an ISA is this one, so i've only a negative to go on so far

Hal17

simbak said:

100% it is Shawbrook at fault here. It really isn't complicated but Shawbrook don't appear to have procedures in place that staff understand for dealing with transfers from stocks and shares ISAs. Straightforward cash ISAs I've never had a problem with Shawbrook in the past. 

Hello simbak, I am sorry to read your post and for the issue you are having with Shawbrook. I have just applied for a transfer from a Vanguard S&S ISA for both my wife and myself. It will be interesting to see how long this takes. I have to admit I am a little nervous after reading about the issues you are having. Hope is gets resolved soon.

simbak

Hal17 said:

simbak said:

100% it is Shawbrook at fault here. It really isn't complicated but Shawbrook don't appear to have procedures in place that staff understand for dealing with transfers from stocks and shares ISAs. Straightforward cash ISAs I've never had a problem with Shawbrook in the past. 

Hello simbak, I am sorry to read your post and for the issue you are having with Shawbrook. I have just applied for a transfer from a Vanguard S&S ISA for both my wife and myself. It will be interesting to see how long this takes. I have to admit I am a little nervous after reading about the issues you are having. Hope is gets resolved soon.

I really hope you have a better experience than we have had. I would advise chasing Shawbrook if things go quiet rather than waiting as we did thinking that the transfer was being progressed. Also, I would email the transfer forms to them (isa@shawbrook.co.uk - initially we posted them and half of them seemed to disappear into thin air ! 

Hal17

Thanks samba. Yes I did email them to Shawbrook and received an automatic reply.

"Thank you for your email. Please be informed that we aim to process this email within 5 working days. We request you to not send any chaser email within that timeframe to ensure that your request gets processed efficiently". Fingers crossed.

info_maniac

I've been burnt by Shawbrook as well. It took them nearly 1 month to transfer in a cash ISA from HSBC. My friend did a transfer from HSBC to Paragon at the same time which took just 3 days. After that I just avoid Shawbrook completely. Even their online banking looks like a product which they have picked up off-the-shelf and just slapped their logo. Avoid.

BTW, Shawbrook do have their "own" sort code while the likes of Vanquis/Paragon use Barclays & HSBC respectively as their clearing bank.

And, Shawbrook are also not part of the Confirmation of payee (COP) scheme:
https://www.shawbrook.co.uk/direct/savings/help/faq/business-savings/what-is-confirmation-of-payee/