Cash ISA Interest rates

Duckett100

I am a newbie and this is my first thread so apologies if this has been discussed
I have £20k to put in a cash ISA - the best one is currently Money box @ 5.09% 
Does anyone have any thoughts if interest rates are likely to go up a little? 
I know it's very hard to say at the minute but a few lenders have put up their mortgage interest rates slightly in the last couple of days
Thanks in advance

Farway

Welcome to the forum

Interest rates are more likely to go down IMO, there is a lot of political pressure to reduce them for lending, mortgages , lower inflation etc and two “lost” by-elections plus a general election looming

You may find a slightly higher, 00.01% or so, but you may lose out while waiting

Mortgage rates are increased for many reasons, too many applicants for instance

refluxer

Interest rates are predicted to go down this year overall, although some banks did reduce their rates too far and have had to increase the rates of some of their fixed rate cash ISAs slightly recently (eg. Oaknorth)

While Moneybox are currently offering the highest-paying cash ISA, it's obviously an easy access ISA with a variable rate so if the BoE rate decreases, then the interest rates of variable rate accounts will also most-likely decrease. With that in mind, it's worth thinking about whether you do need easy access to the money because, if rates do go down as predicted, then a 1 year fixed rate cash ISA with the likes of OakNorth @ 5% might turn out to be the better option in the long run if you don't need access. There are no guarantees either way of course - fixing for any length of time is always a gamble.

If you do need easy access to your ISA savings, then there are currently quite a few options in that 5%+ range - Zopa are only 0.01% less than Moneybox and have no withdrawal restrictions.

One other thing to be aware of with Moneybox is that money saved with them in a cash ISA is actually held by Santander and HSBC (50/50), which must be taken into account (from an FSCS limit point of view) if you have savings with either of those two banks. If you don't have large balances with either of them then this won't be an issue, however.