Virgin Money ISAs

ISA stands for Individual Savings Account, which is a tax-efficient way to grow your money. You don’t pay income tax on your interest or dividends, and you don’t pay Capital Gains Tax on the profits you make from your investments.

There are four main types of ISA:

• Cash ISA - for cash savings.
• Stocks and Shares ISA (sometimes called an investment ISA) – invests in the stock market through funds or stocks and shares.
• Innovative Finance ISA – you lend your money to people or companies for a return.
• Lifetime ISA – helps you save towards your first home or for retirement and comes in the form of cash or stocks and shares.

There are also sub-category ISAs including:

• Help to Buy ISA – a cash ISA option designed to help first-time buyers save for a mortgage deposit and then claim a government bonus when they buy their first home. You can no longer open a Help to Buy ISA however, you can continue to pay into one that’s already set up.
• Junior ISA – available for under 18s and come in the form of cash or stocks and shares.

The current annual ISA allowance is £20,000 each tax year. The maximum you can put into a Lifetime ISA is £4,000 per tax year (which forms part of your overall £20,000 annual allowance). The maximum you can put into a Junior ISA is £9,000 per tax year.

You can spread your allowance across the four different types of ISA, but you can only put money into one ISA of each type in one tax year.

Virgin Money has a range of Cash ISAs, plus a Stocks and Shares ISA with a choice of investment approaches. We don’t offer Innovative Finance or Lifetime ISAs at the moment.

A cash ISA is like a savings account where you earn interest on your money, but the interest is tax free.

A stocks and shares ISA invests your money in the stock market through funds or stocks and shares. You’re taking some risk with your money in return for the chance of higher growth. The return you get depends on the investments you choose and how they perform.

We have a range of cash ISAs.

• Virgin Money Easy Access Cash ISA – nice and simple. Top up and take money out as often as you want.
• Virgin Money Fixed Rate Cash ISA – if you're happy to put your money away for at least a year, you’ll get a definite return.
• Virgin Money Limited Access Cash ISA - make more of your savings. You can top up as often as you like, but there's a limit to how often you can dip into your savings.
• Virgin Money Cash ISA Exclusives – an exclusive interest rate offered to Personal Current Account holders only.

Our Stocks and Shares ISA makes investing really straightforward. We offer three investing approaches: Cautious Growth, Balanced Growth and Adventurous Growth.

You choose the approach that you decide is right for you and our experts take care of the rest, investing your money in a wide range of assets.

We explain everything clearly, including the risks, to help you understand if investing’s right for you. Remember, with any stocks and shares ISA you could get back less than you put in.

Yes you can transfer between cash and stocks and shares ISAs and in either direction. You can transfer as many ISAs as you like from previous tax years. Just give us the details when you apply, or transfer them one at a time once you've opened your account.

A few things to remember when transferring existing ISAs to Virgin Money:

• you can't transfer a Help to Buy ISA, Innovative Finance ISA or Junior ISA.
• you can't open and contribute to two of the same type of ISA in the same tax year.
• if you want to transfer an ISA that you've contributed to in the current tax year, you have to transfer the whole value of it.
• if your ISA has been open for more than one year, you don’t have to transfer the whole value of it.
• when transferring an existing stocks and shares ISA to us, investments are cashed in or sold first and then transferred to us as cash.