Moving S & S ISA money ‘by hand’ to avoid transfer stress?

Mintaherb85

I have £20,000 in a Vanguard stocks and shares ISA and want to move provider due to the increased fees for small portfolios. I am not paying more money into the ISA. To avoid the stress and time delay of an ISA transfer, can I just withdraw the money at the end of the 2025-2026 tax year, pay whatever is left of my unused ISA allowance into my new provider, and then pay the rest into the new provider at the start of the 2026-2027 tax year?

I am very unlikely to get anywhere near to using up my ISA allowance so this isn’t an issue.

clairec666

Nothing wrong with doing that. If you're not going to put the full £20000 in each year then doing an ISA transfer the "proper" way isn't as necessary.

Only downside is if a) you have a sudden windfall and want to put more into your ISA, or b) the £20000 limit is reduced in the next few months.

FrugaiMacDugal

If you withdraw the money you will lose the ISA status.

Albermarle

If you do it this way then you will have withdraw in cash and add to the new one in cash.
Whilst doing that there is always the possibility of market turmoil, which could mean you lose out, or gain from that

dunstonh

I have £20,000 in a Vanguard stocks and shares ISA and want to move provider due to the increased fees for small portfolios. I am not paying more money into the ISA. To avoid the stress and time delay of an ISA transfer, can I just withdraw the money at the end of the 2025-2026 tax year, pay whatever is left of my unused ISA allowance into my new provider, and then pay the rest into the new provider at the start of the 2026-2027 tax year?

You could do that but it seems pointless and actually creates more work.  If doing the simple method is stressful, then I dont see how doing a more complicated method is less stressful.

jimjames

Mintaherb85 said:

To avoid the stress and time delay of an ISA transfer, 

What stress are you expecting? There may be a time delay but if you have the same investments in the old and new ISA the delay is irrelevant. Who are you planned to move the ISA to? I'd think it would be far less stressful to stay invested than draw out the cash and see the markets move in between  and realise you've lost out financially.

masonic

For a S&S ISA, an in specie transfer avoids the financial consequences of a delay by keeping you invested throughout. The only minor consequence of a slow transfer would be paying the platform fee of your old provider a month or two longer than strictly needed, but this should stop as soon as they get confirmation of re-registration of your holdings. Since Vanguard is both the platform provider and the fund provider, you'd hope they'd have an efficient system in place to handle this.

You don't say where you are moving to, but it's possible you won't be able to do an in specie transfer, in which case self transfer may get you there quicker (or it may not), but it will involve selling your holdings, waiting for settlement, requesting a withdrawal, waiting for that to hit your bank account, getting that money to your new provider by some means (it's not always trivial to send a large sum of money to a new payee), then waiting for it to turn up. I think I would find that more stressful than leaving it to the providers to sort out.

thecleaner_2

You could sell the investments and then leave it in cash within your vanguard isa and then transfer that? 

Ayr_Rage

Transfer in specie if possible, then you avoid selling and repurchase fees.

masonic

thecleaner_2 said:

You could sell the investments and then leave it in cash within your vanguard isa and then transfer that? 

Then that would leave the OP out of the market for an indeterminate time.

Mintaherb85

Thank you to everyone for taking the time to reply and for giving me lots of different perspectives to consider.