Stocks and Shares ISA

An ISA, or Individual Savings Account, is a tax-efficient savings or investment account that lets you invest in a wide range of stocks, ETFs, UK Treasury bills, and more.

This type of account is known as a "tax wrapper". This means that your cash and investments inside the account are exempt from UK income, capital gains, and UK dividend tax.

You can put up to £20,000 into a single, or across multiple, ISAs each tax year.

Learn more about ISAs and how they work with our stocks and shares ISA guide.

You can have as many ISAs as you’d like.

Just remember that you can only put £20,000 into your ISAs each tax year. For example, if you put £5,000 into a cash ISA, you can only put a further £15,000 into your stocks and shares ISA. Your 2024/25 allowance will reset on 6 April 2025, when you can put another £20,000 into your ISAs for the 2025/26 tax year.

Understand how to make the most of your various ISAs with our guide on how many ISAs you can have.

Your annual ISA allowance for the 2024/25 tax year is £20,000. The current tax year runs from 6 April 2024 to 5 April 2025.

This means you can put up to a total of £20,000 into one or more ISAs, and you would be exempt from paying tax on capital gains, UK dividends, and interest generated in your ISA.

Make sure you use your allowance by the end of the tax year on 5 April each year. Any unused allowance won’t be carried over to the following tax year, so you lose it forever if you don’t use it.

To find out more on how to use your yearly allowance efficiently, check our guide on your ISA allowance.

Unlike a lot of other providers, the Freetrade ISA is flexible. This means you can withdraw and replace money during the tax year without impacting your annual allowance.

Flexible ISAs give you the added benefit of being able to access your savings and investments as and when you need, without having to forgo all or part of your annual £20,000 allowance.

Learn more about flexible ISAs.

Transferring is simple. You just need to complete the ISA transfer form, and we will do the rest for you.

The transfer process might take four to six weeks, but we will let you know when it’s all completed.

You’ll need to be 18 years of age or over and a UK resident to open an investment ISA. You can’t open a stocks and shares ISA for someone else.

There is no minimum amount required to open a Freetrade ISA.

Yes, you can hold more than one ISA at once, so you can have multiple cash ISAs or stocks and shares ISAs with different providers.

Some people prefer to keep all their ISAs in one place to reduce any fees they pay, and to see their investments in one place.

We don’t charge any fees to transfer your ISAs to Freetrade. Just watch out for any transfer out fees that your current provider might apply.

No, you can’t transfer stocks you already hold in a General Investment Account (GIA) into a stocks and shares ISA.

To get the tax benefits that come with an ISA, you have to deposit money into an ISA, and then invest it. Anyone who holds investments in a GIA will have to carry out bed and ISA transactions if they want to move them into a stocks and shares ISA.

The simple answer is yes!

Investment ISA, share dealing ISA, and trading ISA are just other names for a stocks and shares ISA.

All four investment accounts offer a tax-efficient home for your investments. Tax rules for ISA accounts can change and their benefits depend on your circumstances.

You can invest in a wide range of instruments, including stocks and shares, ETFs, investment trusts, REITs, and UK Treasury bills.