A warning has been issued to anyone with an ISA over “new rules”. Reports show banks are TRAPPING customers on lower savings rates as they ignore new ISA (which offer tax-free savings on up to £20,000 a year) rules.
New rules introduced by HMRC allow savers to open more than one type of ISA with either the same bank or different banks. But only six savings providers allow customers to open multiple ISAs with them: Aldermore, Nationwide, Paragon, Santander, Skipton Building Society, and Zopa.
Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Bank, and NatWest continue to deny their customers this option. Consumer champion Martyn James said: “It’s incredibly disappointing to see from The Sun’s research that the main financial institutions have failed to prepare and introduce these new changes.
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“This is a major concern to me, especially given that more and more people are risking everything on dodgy, unregulated investment options like cryptocurrencies in a desperate bid to make some money.
“We need to help people make their money work for them, not fail to introduce basic, simple changes that would make our money go further.” A UK Finance spokesperson added: “A range of changes have been announced to the ISA regime, some of which are mandatory and some are optional.
“Certain optional changes required time and coordination with HMRC to implement. As a result, rolling them out will take time and some ISA Managers may decide not to adopt all the optional changes.” The rules for multiple ISAs allow you to open and pay into more than one ISA of the same type in a tax year, as long as you don’t exceed the total ISA allowance of £20,000. This change came into effect back in April 2024.
You can use different types of ISAs to meet different financial goals, experts have advised.