Transferring stocks between T212 accounts?

With the news that, from next April we can open more than one of the same ISA in the same year (so long as we don’t exceed 20k), I was wondering if it is possible for me to transfer the stocks I have in my T212 general investment account and into a newly opened S&S ISA account here.

I already have a S&S ISA on Vanguard, which is why I chose a GI account here, but it would obviously be better for me to have another S&S ISA here if possible.

Only cash can be added to an ISA, so you would not be able to transfer in shares from a GIA. You sell them first, then rebuy in the ISA.

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Hello, @Manna :wave:

@Richard.W is right - for the time being, we only offer the ability to transfer funds between your accounts with us. When it comes to moving shares from one brokerage to another, in-specie transfers is a feature that we’re already working on. You can follow our progress in this topic :pray:

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Ok, thanks both. Hopefully the feature will become available soon. I’d imagine there will be a few like me that currently have GI accounts that would now like to have ISAs here, wthout the headache of closing and opening positions on the same stocks.

@Manna I think you may not have yet understood. The ISA regulations do not allow shares to be moved from a GIA to ISA account in the way you are wishing to do.

It is required that the shares be sold in the GIA first and any capital gains tax paid. Only cash can be moved into an ISA account. This is not something that Trading 212 has any power to change.

Some brokers offer something called “bed and ISA” whereby they complete the sale and repurchase for the cost of a single commission rather than two. But as Trading 212 has no commission fee this is moot on their platform. Trading 212 also makes your funds from a sale immediately available to you for moving into the ISA, whereas on some platforms you would have to wait two days for settlement.

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Does anyone know if this functionality will ever be added? Is that even possible? @Richard.W I assume it would need regulatory change by the Government?

I am in the same position: I have shares in my GIA account that I want transferred to my ISA account.

Why not just sell and rebuy? You’ll be in pretty much the same position?

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If you sell shares it takes up your Capital Gains Tax allowance. Transferring would make this not an issue

@samdb Please read the HMRC ISA rules, what you are proposing is illegal and would constitute tax evasion.

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Not really. The price of the shares could go up between the sell and buy, and there’s also the stamp duty to be paid on any UK stocks. And this is leaving aside the time involved in actually selling your positions and buying them again in another account, especially if you want to be diligent and record all your data as you’re buying and selling for bookkeeping.

Anyway, it can’t be done so it’s all academic.

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Wow, @Dougal1984, you escalated that quite quickly haha. Quite a dramatic response. I was just interested.

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Thank you @Manna - super helpful response!

I don’t think this will ever happen. The government, quite reasonably, wants you to crystallise and pay any capital gains tax liability which has accrued while holding shares in a taxable account. The easiest way to achieve this is to make you sell the shares before rebuying in your ISA.

It is not so expensive. Take a US share like NVDA. The sale might be at $912.62 and purchase at $913. Then there is 0.3% lost to Trading 212’s conversion cost selling USD to GBP and then reversing that to USD again in the ISA. So in total about 0.34%. This it not a big deal if you are investing for the long term. Maybe you will be lucky and the price will even drop a little between sale and repurchase. One idea is to make your transactions at a time of the day when bid/offer spread is least, eg not immediately after market open.

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