As we mentioned in the latest Weekly Wrap, we’re testing the ISAs next week. To do that, we need volunteers from the community to try them out.
Before you before you volunteer, please bear in mind that:
You can only open one Stocks & Shares ISA per tax year (between 6th April 2018 - 5th April 2019)
If you’ve opened or contributed to another Stocks & Shares ISA this tax year, by depositing cash into it, then you won’t be able to open ours until next tax year
The annual total ISA limit is £20,000
Once you contribute to your Freetrade Stocks & Shares ISA you will not be able to open or contribute to another Stocks & Shares ISA this tax year
If you already have shares in your Freetrade account, you will need to sell your portfolio in order to take part in this testing
Once you open a Freetrade ISA, you won’t be able to switch back to a regular Freetrade account (GIA)
We’re only testing with a very small group here & you may not be chosen
This is testing, it may not work perfectly but we’ll make sure that you don’t end up out of pocket if anything goes wrong, excluding ‘missed opportunities’ to buy or sell a stock / ETF, if you’re unable to access your account &/or make trades
There are three groups of testers:
New Freetrade users: People who’ll sign up as new Freetrade users
Existing Freetrade users: Who’ll have no cash and no investments in their GIA
Existing Freetrade users: Who’ll only have cash in their GIA
If you fit one of these descriptions, please complete this form
You’re not committing to anything at this point, we’ll share more details about what we’ll need you to do before you make the final decision on whether to take part in the testing or not later this week.
is not correct. It’s only contribution that matters, buying shares in an existing ISA using money that is already in the account does not create an S&S ISA for this year
Nice to see this arriving. Unfortunately I’ll need to wait till next year now to create an ISA. Perhaps you should add to the list of caveats that this is one-way and they won’t be able to go back to a GIA account? I assume you’re not letting people move from ISA back to GIA for now?
Also, do you have plans long term to let people move their shares easily from a GIA over to the ISA? I imagine most people would be fine with the small fluctuations involved with the sell/move/buy process, so that they could have a smooth transition and end up with roughly the same holdings.
Signup was simple, the click of a button in the profile page, confirm some legal stuff and off you go.
I can’t see my investment account anymore, only the isa but I believed this has already been explained. As a result of this I had to ensure I only had cash in my investment account which was then moved into my new ISA.
Some additional feedback:
Once completing the open isa I get this screen. It’s a little confusing as it doesn’t say if I am now finished and what I should do next, e.g. maybe a message that says “now close your app and come back later” or something.
At the moment the portfolio tab looks identical to my eye, you wouldn’t know you were in an isa - but I think that is temporary for this test phase.
The discover tab is identical.
The activity tab gets reset, no data until you make a trade, but again I think that is because they have not provisioned both ISA and GIA at the same time yet.
Before you before you volunteer, please bear in mind that:
