I know that “ISA season” has passed but ISA’s are still appearing in the media, unfortunately for the wrong reasons.
It seems that our esteemed Chancellor is not only interested in land grabbing £25bn from our workplace pensions to be directed in the UK economy by 2030 with the signing of the Mansion House Accord, but she now has her sights firmly fixed on Cash ISA’s.
ISA’s are probably the first tax free wrapper encountered by retail investors. First introduced in the UK on April 6, 1999 by then Chancellor Gordon Brown, and were created to encourage saving and investing by offering tax-free income and growth.
Approximately 22.3 million adults have an ISA, therefore I would suggest that the majority of people reading this hold (or have held) some sort of investment with the ISA tax free wrapper.
There are four main types of ISAs; Cash, Stocks & Shares, Lifetime and Innovative Finance and over the next series of posts I am going to dig into ISA numbers, investor incomes, who subscribes, investor location and the final post will hopefully surprise you.
Cash
Subscriptions in 2022/23 totalled £41.6 billion
Average subscription per account in 2022/23: £5,296
Total market value £294.3 billion in 2022/23
Stocks & Shares (S&)
Subscriptions in 2022/23 totalled £28.0 billion
Average subscription per account in 2022/23: £7,355
Total market value £430.8 billion in 2022/23 (some of which will be uninvested and held as cash)
Innovative Finance (IFISA)
Subscriptions in 2022/23 totalled £115 million
Average subscription per account in 2022/23: £6,764
Total market value £821million in 2022/23
Proplend average IFISA account £34,475
Lifetime (LISA)
Subscriptions in 2022/23 totalled £1.8 billion
Average subscription per account in 2022/23: £2,478
Total market value £2.4 billion in 2022/23
References: All data and commentary are based on the official HMRC publication “Individual Savings Account Tables 2024” (Release date: 19 September 2024).
