By shares, are you including collective investments and do you need advice or will you self select? If buying funds and self-selecting, a number of firms provide the "ISA wrapper" service, share their fees with you by way of a "loyalty bonus" and completely discount the purchase premium, so you get full value for what you're paying and thus better value than if you go direct to the fund management companies for their products. The market leader in this process is Hargreaves Lansdown, (a FTSE 100 business itself) so look at their web site to get a flavour: www.hl.co.uk. It includes a section that they call "The Wealth 150" which gives their considered opinion on the funds to buy in various sectors but without giving specific advice. Advice will cost you money but they'll do that if you want. But there are others out their. If you just want to self-select and buy shares and quoted investment trusts and hold them in an ISA wrapper then really it's just down to which firm gives you the most competitive dealing costs. The going rate seems to be from around six quid per deal for on-line dealing. (There's also stamp duty of course on share purchases but not sales).
Oh, I forgot to say, I guess there's an advantage to looking at "income" rather than "growth" products. If you are getting little by way of dividend then as you get your capital gains tax allowance each year anyway, the ISA wrapper gives you little additional protection from the clutches of the taxman. Whereas if you are buying dividend earning products/shares, the income is sheltered from the prospect of any additional tax other than the initial "tax credit" taken by the taxman anyway, which you can't claim back. I suppose it goes without saying that this all works most efficiently if you are a higher rate tax payer or have significant funds to invest.
Razil It is not possible (due to Govt. imposed restrictions) to actually transfer shares you already own into an ISA wrapper. However, HL, for example, provide a "Bed and ISA" service. Search this term on their web site. Basically, they will sell your shares and buy back the same value in the ISA wrapper. They sweeten the deal by waiving their sell charges but you've still got to pay the difference between the buy/sell spread (usually very small these days), brokers fees for buying and the 0.5% stamp duty I'm afraid. A possible advantage of doing this is that it can crystallise any capital gain within a particular tax year and therefore minimise tax liability. And yes, it's very easy to deal on-line within your ISA wrapper on shares you already hold and on new money up to the annual ISA limit.
The 2013/14 ISA limit is £11,520 - my suggestion would be a high yielding share that offers a bit of cap growth. Take a look at Banco Santander, the dividend yield is ca 8.5%, they pay the dividends quarterly and there's a good chance of some decent capital growth this year.
If the shares are already in an ISA then it is dead easy to transfer them to another provider (they will do it all for you).
I can recommend Hargreaves Lansdown as a cheap provider with a good website and plenty of 'buying power' in the market if looking to buy funds rather than shares.
Comments
If buying funds and self-selecting, a number of firms provide the "ISA wrapper" service, share their fees with you by way of a "loyalty bonus" and completely discount the purchase premium, so you get full value for what you're paying and thus better value than if you go direct to the fund management companies for their products.
The market leader in this process is Hargreaves Lansdown, (a FTSE 100 business itself) so look at their web site to get a flavour: www.hl.co.uk. It includes a section that they call "The Wealth 150" which gives their considered opinion on the funds to buy in various sectors but without giving specific advice. Advice will cost you money but they'll do that if you want.
But there are others out their.
If you just want to self-select and buy shares and quoted investment trusts and hold them in an ISA wrapper then really it's just down to which firm gives you the most competitive dealing costs. The going rate seems to be from around six quid per deal for on-line dealing. (There's also stamp duty of course on share purchases but not sales).
It is not possible (due to Govt. imposed restrictions) to actually transfer shares you already own into an ISA wrapper.
However, HL, for example, provide a "Bed and ISA" service. Search this term on their web site.
Basically, they will sell your shares and buy back the same value in the ISA wrapper. They sweeten the deal by waiving their sell charges but you've still got to pay the difference between the buy/sell spread (usually very small these days), brokers fees for buying and the 0.5% stamp duty I'm afraid. A possible advantage of doing this is that it can crystallise any capital gain within a particular tax year and therefore minimise tax liability.
And yes, it's very easy to deal on-line within your ISA wrapper on shares you already hold and on new money up to the annual ISA limit.
I can recommend Hargreaves Lansdown as a cheap provider with a good website and plenty of 'buying power' in the market if looking to buy funds rather than shares.