Cash ISA transfer issue from Marcus to Plum

SiliconChip

I've recently opened a Plum Cash ISA and requested two transfers in, one from Post Office and one from Marcus. The Post Office one went very smoothly and the money was deposited in my Plum account after about a week. Not so with Marcus unfortunately, It appears that Plum will only make the transfer request by email but Marcus are unable/unwilling to accept transfers through this route, and as a result I've had to cancel that transfer. I hadn't come across this type of stalemate before, is it a common issue? The only transfer glitch I've previously experienced was moving a S&S ISA from Aegon to T212 as Aegon required a physically signed form to be sent to them by T212, but once we worked out how to do that the transfer was completed successfully.

Rumple66

I have also had problems with Plum ( and other providers). With Plum, I started a new money deposit to their cash ISA on 5th April mistakenly thinking that because other providers had been banging on about ‘deadlines for investing in 25/26’ that it would never actually be activated on the same day. It was. Knowing that I had already used my 25/26 allowance I asked Plum to assign the money to a new 26/27 ISA. Not possible so I withdrew the money back through their ‘pocket’ to my bank account, waited a couple of days and started again. The money was again applied to TY 25/26 because, according to them, they’ve treated it as a ‘replaceable allowance’. I pointed out that there was no (further) allowance from the get go! After many emails they say it’s not ‘technically possible’ to change this. Clearly complying with HMRC rules is harder than following their own processes. Your and my many experiences leads me to conclude1. The market is poorly regulated ( differing standards, questionable advertising, systems not coping with tax year transitions). 2. Staff are poorly trained 3. The system/ market does not work in the customers’ best interests - e.g . how is 15 working days an acceptable timeframe for effecting an ISA transfer in the digital age?!

masonic

They only do digital transfers, so won't accept a transfer if it would have to fall back to a paper-based process.

A workaround is to transfer to any convenient major provider (such as your main bank) and then onward to Plum.

It is becoming increasingly common for the more digital providers to limit who they'll transfer to/from, and/or by which mechanism.

SiliconChip

Thanks for the explanation, it's slightly surprising that Plum also haven't followed the same route as Marcus given that they are also a digital provider. I had considered the use of an intermediate ISA to do the transfer but while Marcus is still paying above 4% (just!) I'll probably stay with them for now.

masonic

It often comes down to rigid requirements imposed by the receiving provider in their implementation of the electronic process, such as requiring a sort code and account number, where some providers like Plum and Moneybox just use national insurance number.