Timescales for ISA transfers

GreyPilgrim

We had three ISA's (Bradford and Bingley, Barclays and Halifax) which I transferred over to Nationwide and I'm getting impatient about when the transfer should be completed....

Went into the local branch of Nationwide on April 5th with all the paperwork. Process was apparently begun (due to their backlog) on April 12th (which by my calculation is now 33 working days ago.

All I've had so far is a letter from Bradford & Bingley telling me that that account has been closed and the cheque sent to nationwide (dated 14th May). Nothing at all from Barclays or Halifax, and both those accounts are still showing as open, with the original sums still present.

Nationwide is currently a nightmare to get through to although I persevered yesterday and finally got a promise that someone will look into the issue and call me back within 48 hours.

This is the first time I've transferred ISA's from between providers...is this type of delay usual or am I being impatient?

GP

debbie42

GreyPilgrim wrote: »

This is the first time I've transferred ISA's from between providers...is this type of delay usual or am I being impatient?

It's completely "normal": see the threads on Lloyds TSB & Barclays. It's pretty pathetic that a transfer takes such a long time, IMO. You'd think that the ISA system would allow easier transfers.

earlgrey_3

GreyPilgrim wrote: »

This is the first time I've transferred ISA's from between providers...is this type of delay usual or am I being impatient?

Seems to be very common. In theory the cheque should be sent to the new provider within 30 days of them making the request. In practice they blame each other and it can take two months and more. Every year there are the same problems.

We now also have the position where many providers won't accept transfers in at all. That even includes the government's own NS&I - which is a tad ludicrous for what was supposed to be a portable savings scheme.

I'm coming round to the idea that cash ISAs would be better scrapped and for everyone to have a basic tax allowance for savings income regardless of whether they were in a special account or not. Might cause far fewer headaches than the annual April merry-go-round..

mk-donald

I'm afraid from my personal experience that you're far from alone in having such issues.

It seems to be completely variable with some institutions treating their owners/shareholders/customers as valued and others treating them with contempt.

Eg At the end of March/early April I made 3 transfers to Britannia BS (who pay well - with member bonus - but arent very timely but ARE good at backdating to make sure you dont lose out from their "sloth") with National Counties BS being spot on, Kent Reliance BS reasonable, and West Bromwich BS frankly taking the mickey and only making the transfer payment on the 30th day after the a/c matured (not the 30 days allowed for 'admin/processing' from when they received the request) ie the last day normally tolerated by HMR&C.

The moral is BE indignant. I heard a story on Radio 4 last week that Barclays weren't going to even backdate interest to when people applied to their overwhelmed/inefficient/incompetent/slothful (choose the one you think closest matches) system, but to 14 days after receipt = a total mickey take! I'd never tolerate an institution denying me interest in that way!

BTW I wouldn't expect too much as an owner of Nationwide! Today I received a May 2008 letter from them about "my" ex Portman a/c and how it was changing saying to "ignore if you have recently closed the a/c" - well I closed it in September 2007, 7.5 months ago which is it seems "recent" to them - and that was after a GREAT deal of hassle with repeated incompetence, for which I had insisted on compensation for!

profftnt

Ditto, transferred 2 into nationwide, both accounts are now closed (had confirmation) and its with nationwide.... its been 6 weeks.

wellsie82

i work with isa transfers and ive personally found that since this new tax year has begun many plan managers are experiencing delays

personally i think this is down to the isa reforms. until april you could transfer a cash isa into another cash isa, and stocks & shares into another stocks & shares and this was fine

now what you're getting is many folk with cash isa's now want to transfer these over to their existing stocks & shares isa and thus more transfers are taking place than say 3-4 months ago

it would appear that not many companies within the isa system have given it a second thought that as of the start of this tax year that the number of transfer requests would increase so much

this isn't an excuse, just a possible reason

as far as im aware, there isn't a deadline as such for such transfers to be complete, the HMRC state that their "guideline" is 30 days

Sapphire

wellsie82 wrote: »

as far as im aware, there isn't a deadline as such for such transfers to be complete, the HMRC state that their "guideline" is 30 days

Well, my transfer to Nationwide has been going on since 23 March - and they haven't even done me the courtesy of contacting me to confirm that they've (incorrectly) transferred the money into an existing FRISA dated September 2007. I'm not going to post the whole story here again, since I have already done so twice.

If Nationwide are too busy in their ISA transfer department to deal with simple ISA transfers, why on earth don't they take on more staff to deal with the workload? Messing around with people's personal savings is completely out of order.

This will be terrible for customer relations, even if the problems are eventually sorted out. Don't these financial institutions care about the fact that their businesses are reliant on their customers for survival?

martinman3

mk-donald wrote: »

At the end of March/early April I made 3 transfers to Britannia BS (who pay well - with member bonus - but arent very timely but ARE good at backdating to make sure you dont lose out from their "sloth")

I really am surprised, most people are transferring out because the rates are so bad and the bonus, whose value is falling, doesn't make up for it. For me the bonus was equivalent to an extra 0.5% at it's best, but you could get approx 1.4% extra by moving elsewhere.

GreyPilgrim

(sigh)

35 working days. still no sign of the Bradford and Bingley balance appearing in Nationwide.

Barclays and Halifax accounts are still open. Barclays say that they haven't even been contacted yet by Nationwide to request the transfer.

I can't even get through to Nationwide.

it's going to get a lot worse than this, isn't it.

Baldur

GreyPilgrim wrote: »

I can't even get through to Nationwide.

it's going to get a lot worse than this, isn't it.

I suspect so. A friend submitted transfer forms on 4th April, it took a formal letter of complaint in mid-May to receive any sort of response from Nationwide.

The two previous ISAs have been closed & transferred by the respective ISA managers within the last couple of days but still nothing further from Nationwide.

mk-donald

martinman3 wrote: »

I really am surprised, most people are transferring out because the rates are so bad and the bonus, whose value is falling, doesn't make up for it. For me the bonus was equivalent to an extra 0.5% at it's best, but you could get approx 1.4% extra by moving elsewhere.

You can't have been in the right Britannia product!

I got 6.1% fixed + unknown membership reward, hopefully say 0.3% = 6.4% which is better than anything else I saw/foresaw.

Last year reward it was 18p/£100 = 0.18%
but as I've been a (token) member 10yrs + = doubled = 0.36%

Meanwhile back on topic:
For those upset with timescales by your providers (ie over 30 days from request) it is TIME to make a FORMAL complaint as that DOES seem to be the only way to get them shaken up.