Halifax Help to Buy

EagleHunter

My daughter has a Help to Buy ISA with Halifax and has managed, to her credit, to save the amount required to achieve the full govt bonus. However, I was shocked to just find out that the current rate on this is a miserly 1% or so. As instant access rates are currently up around 4% this to me is outrageous and indicates that they may be using the govt paid bonus to profiteer, banking on the fact that account holders cannot/will not switch as doing so will mean losing out on the bonus. Apparently Nationwide are offering 3.25% on their Help to Buys. Have I got this right and if so should Halifax not be held to task on this. Thoughts and advice welcome. Thanks

eskbanker

EagleHunter said:

My daughter has a Help to Buy ISA with Halifax and has managed, to her credit, to save the amount required to achieve the full govt bonus. However, I was shocked to just find out that the current rate on this is a miserly 1% or so.

https://www.halifax.co.uk/isas/cash-isas/help-to-buy-isa.html states that they pay 2.5% on the first £12K but only 0.95% above that - there's no point in saving more than £12k in a HTB ISA though, so she should put the excess elsewhere.

EagleHunter said:

As instant access rates are currently up around 4% this to me is outrageous and indicates that they may be using the govt paid bonus to profiteer

Eh?  The bonus is paid directly to the account-holder's conveyancer at the time of purchasing the property, so doesn't ever go to the HTB ISA provider!

EagleHunter said:

Apparently Nationwide are offering 3.25% on their Help to Buys. Have I got this right and if so should Halifax not be held to task on this.

Halifax's rate is about 77% of Nationwide's so isn't particularly competitive but doesn't really warrant 'outrage' IMHO....