ISA advice please

[Bonfuddled]

I'm confused.
I have £20k in an isa account which I've had for a year or so. The interest is near enough zero!!

I tried to open a new isa with a better interest rate but when I tried to transfer the money my bank wouldn't let me.

How do I get my money put in a higher interest isa account? I don't understand it all

[Askingschoolquestions]

What do you mean your bank wouldn't let you?

As long as its isa to isa its fine. And within yearly limits.

Usually you choose a new place and they pull it out for you.
However I'd look at stocks and shares isa.

[WoollyFoolly]

Not all isa accounts allow transfers in of existing isas - especially higher interest ones, the banks will offer a higher rate as long as they can limit the max you can put in to one years worth but if you transferred in 20 years worth of isa savings, the interest would cost them too much.

[HPandTheNeverEndingBedtime]

My understanding is that You can only pay into one a year so it might be that.

If you are between 18 and 39 and can afford to luck some away for the future moneybox off a lifetime Isa 1.4% + government bonus of £1 for every £4 you save. You can save a max of £4000 per year and earn £1000 +interest. I like the fact you can link all of your other accounts to it and roundup the pence of any purchase to the nearest pound and save it. The Downside is it is locked away and you lose the bonus if you take the money early unless in the following situations you are 60/purchase your first house or develop a terminal illness.

[dementedpixie]

The new provider needs to do the transfer for you

[dementedpixie]

www.gov.uk/individual-savings-accounts/transferring-your-isa

[BarbaraofSeville]

When you say the interest is near zero, what rate are you looking at?

The best for instant access is about 1.5% but you might get slightly more in a fixed or notice account. Ignore stocks and shares unless you won't need the money in the next few years.

Or you could take a gamble with the interest and buy premium bonds instead.

[Jumblebee]

Is the ISA you have now in a fixed rate ISA or instant access? Usually fixed rate ISAs don't allow closures or withdrawals or if they do their is usually a penalty (loss of interest)

Check with the provider your ISA is currently with and tell them you want to transfer the balance to a different ISA, they should explain if you are able to do so. If you are wanting to transfer the ISA to another ISA with a new provider you'll need to contact the new provider to open the ISA and give them the details of the current ISA, they then contact your current provider on your behalf to keep the funds in an ISA wrapper.

When did you fund the £20,000 in your ISA? If it was anytime from 6th April 2019 that counts as this year's allowance, so if you wanted to move funds to a new allowance you would have to move the entire balance so you still technically have only funded one ISA this tax year. If it was before that date then that counts as the previous year's allowance, so you should be able to transfer all or part of that £20,000 allowance to a new ISA and still have you 19/20 £20,000 allowance to use (if you haven't already used this)

It will depend on the T&Cs of your current ISA account and whether the new ISA allows partial transfers in or transfers in for the full amount.

(I have used paragraphs for this post but for some reason MN seems to remove them to make my posts more difficult to read so if this has happened I'm sorry )

[Bonfuddled]

It's an instant access isa with Lloyd's and the interest rate is 0.20%.
I've been paying into it for a couple of years.
Last month I saw they had a higher interest rate isa so opened a new one but they wouldn't let em transfer the money over so I closed it again.

I want to be able to keep the whole amount together but want to see if I can earn a little more interest?

[dementedpixie]

Was it the way you were trying to transfer it? You cant do it, the provider does it for you

[Bonfuddled]

It was the same provider though

[dementedpixie]

Did you ask them to transfer into the new one

[Bonfuddled]

Yes, they could only transfer £3k max which is no good to me as I want to keep the whole amount together

[WoollyFoolly]

As I said, a lot of higher rate isas don't take transfers in, it's not that you can't transfer out.
If you look on somewhere like this, you can quickly scroll through the list of the highest rates and disregard the ones that don't take transfers in.

www.money.co.uk/savings-accounts/isa-savings.htm

[WoollyFoolly]

Highest rate easy access ISA on that list that take transfers in is the Virgin money double-take isa at 1.36% but you are limited to 2 withdrawals a year.

[Ribenaberriesgowoo82]

Looking at the Lloyds ISAs, they have one which is a MINIMUM of 3k investment. Maybe the cashier was getting confused.