How many ISAs can I have?

Updated

There are limits to how much you can invest each year into one of the four types of Individual Savings Accounts (ISAs), but over time you can accumulate a lot of ISA accounts. Keeping track of them might become overwhelming if you use the maximum £20,000 ISA allowance each tax year by splitting it across several ISAs.

Each tax year, you can open one of each ISA type: cash ISA, stocks and shares ISA, innovative finance ISA, or Lifetime ISA. This means you can’t open two stocks and shares ISAs in the same year, but you can open one stocks and shares ISA and one cash ISA, for example.

Let’s take a concrete example! For instance, you decide to invest the maximum £20,000 in a cash ISA this tax year. But the next year, you decide you want to take a bit more risk, and set up a stocks and shares ISA for £15,000. You also decide to invest the remaining £5,000 allowance available for that year into a cash ISA with a different provider than the previous year because this one offers better rates. Now you already have three ISAs, and this could continue to multiply as the years go on. Some people don’t like the idea of having multiple accounts because it can get difficult to keep track of them.

Instead of opening new ISAs there is also the opportunity to transfer ISAs to a different provider. You can transfer your ISAs any time, but if you want to transfer money you’ve invested in an ISA during the current year, you have to transfer all of it. From investments made in previous years, you can choose to transfer all or part of your savings.

In order not to lose the tax advantages for that year, you should initiate the transfer through the new provider. If you would simply withdraw your funds to move them, you would lose all your tax benefits. Before starting the procedure, check with your current provider, they might have restrictions or make you pay a charge.

How many ISAs can I have?

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