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Redundant Help to Buy ISA and maintaining the ISA wrapper status of it's funds

Nardge
Posts: 265 Forumite

Dear Forumites,
I have a maxed out Help-To-Buy ISA which I'll never use for the intended purpose. I thus want to close it, albeit whilst maintaining the ISA wrapper status of the funds within through transferring them elsewhere, ideally into a normal Cash ISA.
When I contacted Yorkshire Building Society (YBS) today, they advised me that this isn’t possible, that the only recourse of action would be to extract the funds as standard cash.
To me this seems not right, ultimately it's still my ISA money, so surely it should be possible to transfer the funds to a non - Help-To-Buy ISA, as is my right?
I don't recall them ever saying that once money is deposited, you can’t have it back as ISA money in the event that a house is not bought.
Worst case scenario, if it's a YBS quirk, does anyone know a Help-To-Buy ISA provider who’ll permit me to transfer funds through as per my above wish?
Thanking you in advance for your responses,
With Kind Regards.
0
Comments
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I thought H2B was just subject to normal transfer rules.
Ultimately the transfer is triggered by you advising your new ISA provider of the details of your old ISA. You don't need to ask YBS for permission.1 -
YBS have essentially said they won't permit the transfer out of ISA funds to non Help-To-Buy ISAs.
Thus if a 'normal' (non Help-Too-Buy) Cash ISA provider requested transfer of funds, YBS would refuse...0 -
It might just be a training issue or a limitation in the products they offer not to allow a HTB ISA to be transferred into their own Cash ISA. If you open a normal Cash ISA elsewhere and request the new provider transfer in the HTB ISA then I don't see what grounds they would have to stop the transfer-out.1
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Will Halifax let you convert it into an easy access cash ISA?
1 -
I did manage to transfer my old HTB ISA into a standard cash ISA, but I found that only a few providers allow the inbound transfers of HTB ISAs. I transferred mine to Moneybox without any problem at all - HTB ISA transfer is even a specific option in their app based transfer process.1
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Thank you to all. I've managed to get it transferred out!2
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For the benefit of anybody else reading this, who might be in the same situation, could you tell how you did it?0
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I managed to transfer out my Help-To-Buy Cash ISA with Yorkshire Building Society and convert it into a 'normal' Cash ISA with my Skipton Building Society account. Halifax and Moneybox have both been suggested as alternatives.0
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I did a Help to buy isa transfer from Nationwide to Lloyds a few months ago - with no issues at all. Just did a normal transfer request - and it was actioned within days.
So no idea why YBS would claim it is not possible?0 -
They may have assumed I was wanting to transfer my Help-To-Buy ISA into another of their YBS ISAs (which isn't permitted apparently), there may have been a staff training issue, or both. Alexland (above) was right.1
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