New guidelines to speed up ISA transfers

3 September 2008

New guidelines have been introduced to help accelerate the speed and efficiency with which savers can transfer cash ISAs between providers.

To take advantage of the best rates, savers are entitled to switch their cash ISA accounts to alternative providers.

However, many people have experienced delays – sometimes months – in making the transfers, suffering a loss of interest in the process.

Complaints have centred on the clunky method of physically moving cheques and documents from bank to bank, and from building society to building society.

As a result the British Bankers Association (BBA) and the Building Societies Association (BSA) produced a set of guidelines designed to iron out problems.

Under the recommendations, transfers are to be made uniform.

When a saver chooses to switch providers, a standardised form will now need to be completed.

A specific period of time has been established for each part of the subsequent transfer process, and savers will be told of any delays that have been incurred.

Despite the improvements, however, switching providers may still take as long as four weeks, it has been predicted, and it will continue to involve the movement of cheques and paper documents. Moreover, the new guidelines are not mandatory.

But Angela Knight, the chief executive of the BBA, has said that it is not “the intention for there to be any dead areas as far as interest is concerned”. Once any cash ISA is moved from one bank or building society to another it should start earning interest.

Electronic transfers could also be part of future changes.

Ms Knight said: “We want to move to electronic transfer now that we know that we’ve got a product that is going to stay. The work on that starts this month.”