Transferring to First Direct ISA + general ISA transfer question

shaggy

Have just found out the hard way that First Direct only allow you to transfer a max of £3000 from existing ISA provider.

Can I transfer £3000 now, top this up with the maximum allowance of £3000..so a total of £6k in the First Direct ISA for this year. In the meantime the remaining ISA money stayswith my current provider (Northern Rock).

Roll on to October when First Direct's interest rate goes down. At this point, is itpossible to transfer BOTH the first direct and Northern Rock ISAs onto someone likeHalifax or Yorkshire Building Society? i.e. I'd like to have only one ISA account if possible at this point?

Milarky

IIRC, First Direct said that you could only transfer a current year's subscription from a different ISA - not any previous years' subs. That would limit you to £3000. Also, ISA rules mean that would be in whole, as part transfers are only allowed for past years. To get £6,000 in the FD ISA it was necessary to have opened that ISA before last April [directly or via transfer] and then have subscribed a further amount newly into the already opened ISA after April.

As regards futher transfers to different providers: [i.e. away from FD and NR] that will also depend on the selected provider being willing to accept a transfer, as they are not required to do so under any rules [e.g. FD's ISA is 'CAT'/'stakeholder' compliant but that only requires them to allow unrestricted withdrawals and free transfers 'out' - not 'in']

HTH

Nick_C_4

I spoke to FD about this myself at the beginning of the tax year, and my understanding was slightly different: you can transfer previous year's money, this year's money, and susbscribe new money but the total you can put into their ISA is £3,000, however made up.

So, I think you can transfer £3,000 from another provider, and put a new £3,000 into a different ISA (not FD's), but there's no way to get £6,000 into FD's ISA.

Milarky

Nick_C wrote:

I spoke to FD about this myself at the beginning of the tax year, and my understanding was slightly different: you can transfer previous year's money, this year's money, and susbscribe new money but the total you can put into their ISA is £3,000, however made up.

So, I think you can transfer £3,000 from another provider, and put a new £3,000 into a different ISA (not FD's), but there's no way to get £6,000 into FD's ISA.

They may have changed the offer slightly and currently limit it to £3000, but it was possible to subscribe fully in two stages as described [the proof being in the fact that I did just that]. The second subscription [into FD] was possible because a new tax year came along, as I said. Accounts opened now cannot benefit however because the offer - which only runs until October - won't cross two subscription periods.

moomintroll_3

I subscribed in this tax year and transferred my Halifax ISA to FD - I have substantially more than 3K in their ISA right now..

Wasn't an issue - took ages (nearly 6 weeks in fact) but it was allowed without a problem.

G