ISAs remain a key pillar of most clients’ long-term financial plans due to their valuable tax advantages. In fact, following the Autumn Budget, the ISA allowance is arguably now even more precious given the increases to the rates of capital gains tax applied to gains from unwrapped assets. And the annual ISA allowance – which, as announced in the Budget, will remain at £20,000 until 2030 – is not an insufficient amount. Over the years, a substantial amount can be accumulated within these tax-efficient accounts – indeed, there are many reports of ISA millionaires living in our midst!
It's an obvious thing to say but, leaving aside whether pension contributions should be maximised first or not, it makes a lot of sense for clients to fully utilise their ISA allowances wherever possible. However, it does surprise me how many individuals only partially use their ISA allowance each year even when they have unwrapped assets remaining on the platform.
As at 20 January 2025, for example, there were over 37,000 clients on our platform who had only partially used their 2024/25 ISA allowance. Collectively, these individuals are able to contribute £487 million more to their ISAs before the end of the tax year. Of course, many may be unable to top up any further. However, after analysing the data, we do know 4,083 clients have more than £1,000 of unwrapped assets sitting on the platform which could easily be moved into their ISAs, subject to any capital gains tax considerations, through a Bed & ISA exercise.
Powerful data at your fingertips
The good news is, identifying clients that could potentially benefit from moving unwrapped assets into an ISA on our platform is a very quick and straightforward process. The ISA Contribution Report, which is part of a range of reports available from our Reporting Services facility, is a report detailing clients who have contributed to an ISA in this tax year but have not utilised their full allowance. It also shows clients linked to your agency that haven’t contributed to an ISA in the current tax year. Designed to help you demonstrate and meet the FCA’s monitoring and reporting requirements for treating customers fairly (TCF), it also provides information on the value of assets held in unwrapped accounts that could be moved into an ISA. The report can be run daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly.
What’s more, in order to facilitate your ISA sales activity and marketing campaigns, the ISA Contributions Report generates data for mailings. This is supplied in XLSX, CSV or TSV format, which can be read by most database and spreadsheet programmes. If a promotional campaign appeals to you, then you may find our user guide on how to run the report and corresponding marketing exercise useful.
Quick and easy access
All of our reports, including the ISA Contribution Report and similar reports relating to pension contributions, are delivered through our online Client Management system (our full range of reports are detailed on our Reporting Services web page). This ensures your company’s confidential data remains protected at all times and allows you to control who in your organisation can have access to it.
If you do not currently have access to Reporting Services, you simply need to set up a User ID and PIN online. If your firm is already set up with access to our online services, please contact your firm administrator who will be able to set you up with individual login details.
Tax-efficient fee funding
Finally, while on the topic of helping clients maximise the tax benefits of ISAs, it’s worth reiterating that the ISA allowance is a finite allowance. Given this point, does it therefore always make sense to take fee payments from a client’s ISA when this reduces the value of assets held within a tax-free environment? It may be worth considering taking the fees from outside the wrapper instead, such as paying the fees for the ISA from the client’s General Investment Account or a cash account sitting alongside it. You can read more about the options for paying fees here. I also cover this subject in this short video.
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