Moving S&S ISA from Freetrade to T212 - advice needed

🤝 Help
1

I’ve got £20k invested in last years S&S ISA with Freetrade in a mix of UK, EUR and US stocks, and have since opened a new 2025 S&S in T212. I’d like to move everything over from Freetrade to T212 in-specie and have been reading up on the process, but still have somes questions for anyone who’s already been through the process successfully. So far I understand that:

  • the process might take 2-3 months to complete
  • that Freetrade will charge me $17 for each US stock transfer
  • no fractional shares can be transferred (so need to round up/down first)
  • stocks must be available on both platforms for successful transfer

The questions that I can’t seem to find answers to here in the FAQ or from looking online are :

  1. Can you hold the same instrument/stock on both platforms or will this cause a conflict and stop a successful transfer? i.e. if I own RR.L in my Freetrade 2024 ISA and also have bought it since in my T212 2025 ISA, do I have to sell one of them before transferring, or will they be happily consolidated?

  2. I’ve seen in the FAQ that you can’t “manage your positions” while the transfer is ongoing - does this mean that any instruments I have in Freetrade ISA can’t be bought/sold in T212 once the transfer is ongoing? i.e. if I do have RR.L in both ISAs, will it be frozen for the duration of the transfer?

  3. I’ve seen some cases where people have cited that transfers have failed due to brokers using incompatible clearance/settlement facilities - is this at a stock/instrument level and is there any way for me to check this before starting the transfer?

Thanks in advance to anyone who’s been through this process and can offer any advice or info :slight_smile:

2

Yes, you can.

No, it means that you won’t be able to trade the holdings being transferred in the Freetrade ISA until the transfer is complete.

It won’t impact what you can do in your T212 account.

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3

Wonderful! Thanks so much for your reply. Have you gone through the same process and did you have any issues?

4

I’ve gone through it with other brokers and haven’t had any issues.

The only thing I have found is that the process takes longer than I expected!

5

ok, great. You’ve convinced me :slight_smile: I’ve pulled the trigger and started the process. Can I ask how long the transfer(s) took for you?

6

I transferred from freetrade at end of last year. I did not have any us or fractional shares. It took about 5 weeks. The shares turned up a few says before the cash did. I could not buy or sell on freetrade but could with t212.

7

Thanks for the info. I’m really surprised at how long they take to effect this.

8

I’m providing an interim update here in case anyone else finds it useful in the future.

So far Freetrade has been fairly good with communication and T212 has been excellent. I had a mixture of UK, Euro and US stocks and was told straight away that Euro stocks can’t be transferred - I had to liquidate the positions and transfer in cash, or leave them with Freetrade. Apparently Freetrade and T212 use different custodians to safeguard the instruments/stocks and in this case it makes them ineligible to transfer. This made sense for the stocks I’d bought in Euros, but also included a couple of GBP based ETFs which I wasn’t expecting - VGER and FXC. I liquidated all of them and used the cash to top up my existing positions in US instruments instead.

T212 sent an amended transfer request to Freetrade who asked me to confirm that I was happy with the transfer and to cover costs (£17 for each US instrument). I was advised by T212 that they’ve confirmed everything with Freetrade and the transfer should happen within the next few days (allowing for the US holiday weekend). Fingers currently crossed that it will all go ahead smoothly.

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9

thanks for letting us know. 5 weeks seems pretty quick by comparison to some of the 2-3 months scenarios I’ve read about :slight_smile:

10

Thanks for sharing your experience so far. I’m thinking of moving my FT ISA over but also heard from another forum member that their VWRP holding couldn’t be transferred, which I’m surprised about considering it’s a major UK listed ETF. Any idea why this would be?

11

very surprised, my vrwp was OK.

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