Paragon Bank does not let you open a cash isa if you already have one opened this tax year

jnenorfolk

I am in the fortunate position of having savings that I will have to start paying tax on the interest so I thought I would investigate opening a cash isa.  Seeing that you can open multiple cash isa's, I thought I would put some money with different providers. I opened my first cash isa on Monday and yesterday tried to open a cash isa with Paragon Bank.
The online application asks if you have already opened a cash isa in the current tax year which I answered yes.  The next question was not applicable as I did not want to transfer my first cash isa but there was not an option for this so left it blank.  The application then fails so I rang Paragon to enquire why this was happening.  The explanation I got from Paragon was they do not allow a new application if a person already has opened a cash isa in the current tax-year and there are other providers that also has this restriction.
I fed back that I could not find anything that relates to this restriction on their website (nor the MSE website).
Is this something that other people have found with other providers?  Should this be included in the MSE "Top paying accounts" section so people can make an informed decision who they go with just like the comment whether the isa is a "flexible" isa nor not.

Have I mis-understood the rules around the comment "and in the 2024/25 tax year, you can put up to £20,000 into one or more if you're 18 or over."

eskbanker

This issue has been covered in quite a few previous threads - the ISA scheme rules do indeed now allow concurrent funding of multiple cash ISAs but some providers haven't adjusted their systems and products accordingly and so continue to apply the old rules, either by preventing multiple ISAs with them (which is fair enough) or trying to prevent multiple ISAs across different providers.  The latter is unenforceable and anti-competitive....

jnenorfolk

I tried a search for this issue in the forum and did not see anything recent ie this tax year, but being a new forum member I guess my searching terms were not good enough for these to appear. 

I still do think this information should be included in the MSE "Top paying accounts" section so people can make an informed decision who they go with. Had I have known this upfront, I would have checked what was available before I actually opened anything.  Purely because it was detailed, I did investigate and take into account whether the cash isa is "flexible" or not.

eskbanker

jnenorfolk said:

I tried a search for this issue in the forum and did not see anything recent ie this tax year, but being a new forum member I guess my searching terms were not good enough for these to appear.

Threads on this board (referencing 'multiple' is a good place to start!) include:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6520238/isa-providers-are-most-choosing-to-ignore-the-chancellors-new-isa-reforms
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6539471/providers-that-allow-you-to-hold-multiple-isas-within-the-same-tax-year
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6546269/multiple-isa-s
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6550149/2024-multiple-isa-rules
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6556980/charter-savings-bank-isa-accounts-no-multiple-current-year-isa-accounts-permitted

Beddie

Just say no. They will never find out and you are not breaking any ISA rules.

Rich2808

Beddie said:

Just say no. They will never find out and you are not breaking any ISA rules.

Spot on. Their ISA 'rules' don't trump the legislation/ISA rules approved by the government and Parliament. You are legally entitled to open as many cash ISA you like with as many providers as allow you to do so - as long as you invest less than £20k in total. No provider will know what you invest with other providers anyway.

So as the saying goes 'what Paragon doesn't know won't hurt them'. As great an ISA provider as Paragon are Parliament trumps Paragon.

Aged

jnenorfolk said:

I am in the fortunate position of having savings that I will have to start paying tax on the interest so I thought I would investigate opening a cash isa.  Seeing that you can open multiple cash isa's, I thought I would put some money with different providers. I opened my first cash isa on Monday and yesterday tried to open a cash isa with Paragon Bank.
The online application asks if you have already opened a cash isa in the current tax year which I answered yes.  The next question was not applicable as I did not want to transfer my first cash isa but there was not an option for this so left it blank.  The application then fails so I rang Paragon to enquire why this was happening.  The explanation I got from Paragon was they do not allow a new application if a person already has opened a cash isa in the current tax-year and there are other providers that also has this restriction.
I fed back that I could not find anything that relates to this restriction on their website (nor the MSE website).
Is this something that other people have found with other providers?  Should this be included in the MSE "Top paying accounts" section so people can make an informed decision who they go with just like the comment whether the isa is a "flexible" isa nor not.

Have I mis-understood the rules around the comment "and in the 2024/25 tax year, you can put up to £20,000 into one or more if you're 18 or over."

I spent a frustrating few hours yesterday trying to transfer my recently matured Virgin cash ISA to another provider. It's not a current tax year ISA - my 24/25 allowance is already used elsewhere. My choice of providers is fairly limited, due to 1) my preference for monthly interest, 2) already having cash deposits with a few banks and 3) being very selective about which organisations I prefer to deal with. I tried to open a new ISA via the Hargreaves Lansdown active savings account but it does not offer me the option to do so, presumably because my current year ISA is via that account. I don't want to transfer into that ISA though, because better rates are available from other providers! Edit: just thinking, they probably don't allow additional deposits now anyway.

I then tried to open a new ISA directly with Charter Bank, but again they seem to screen out the option to open a new ISA if you have already subscribed to an ISA for 24/25. I thought about answering 'no' to the question about whether I already have a current year ISA, but I was not comfortable with basically telling an untruth so decided against.

Another thing I've noticed is that the sites listing 'best rates' for ISAs don't seem to have a column for 'transfers in allowed' like they used to. 

What on earth is going on here?

eskbanker

Aged said:
Another thing I've noticed is that the sites listing 'best rates' for ISAs don't seem to have a column for 'transfers in allowed' like they used to. 

MSE shows this except for easy access ones, so chose not to retain that when redesigning their presentation (the old style tabulated version continues for fixed term products).

Moneyfacts allows filtering by transfers within its full search window.

Aged said:
What on earth is going on here?

You're experiencing a range of separate issues with different businesses and lumping them together?

Aged

eskbanker said:

Aged said:
Another thing I've noticed is that the sites listing 'best rates' for ISAs don't seem to have a column for 'transfers in allowed' like they used to. 

MSE shows this except for easy access ones, so chose not to retain that when redesigning their presentation (the old style tabulated version continues for fixed term products).

Moneyfacts allows filtering by transfers within its full search window.
 

Aged said:
What on earth is going on here?

You're experiencing a range of separate issues with different businesses and lumping them together?

I am not seeing that on Moneyfacts - only columns for AER, Account Type, Term, Interest Paid and Managing Account. 

All I know is that I've been moving cash between ISAs for many years now and never had any problems before!

eskbanker

Aged said:

eskbanker said:

Moneyfacts allows filtering by transfers within its full search window.

I am not seeing that on Moneyfacts - only columns for AER, Account Type, Term, Interest Paid and Managing Account.

I didn't say that it's displayed as a column, but if you use their 'full search' facility you can filter the results to show ISAs which accept transfers.

Aged

eskbanker said:

Aged said:

eskbanker said:

Moneyfacts allows filtering by transfers within its full search window.

I am not seeing that on Moneyfacts - only columns for AER, Account Type, Term, Interest Paid and Managing Account.

I didn't say that it's displayed as a column, but if you use their 'full search' facility you can filter the results to show ISAs which accept transfers.

Sorry, I don't know what you're talking about. If I press on 'full search' or any of those other buttons, nothing happens. I'm viewing via laptop.