What is an ISA? – InvestEngine

An ISA - or Individual Savings Account - is a tax-efficient way to save or invest. It allows you to earn income or returns without paying UK tax on them. You often hear these referred to as 'wrappers' which is another way of saying the money you hold in them is sheltered from both Income Tax (on dividends) and Capital Gains Tax (on investment growth or capital appreciation).

There are different types of ISAs, but at InvestEngine, we offer a Stocks & Shares ISA - designed for long-term investing in investment vehicles like ETFs.

What are the tax benefits?

No capital gains tax on your investment gains
No income tax on dividends
You don’t need to declare your ISA investments on your tax return

If you’re not sure about your tax allowances or how this could affect any other investments, we’d always recommend chatting to a financial advisor or tax specialist about your specific circumstances.

Investing in an ISA is one of the most popular ways to invest in the UK - especially if you’re aiming to invest your wealth over the long term.

For more details on ISAs, visit the HMRC ISA guidance page.

How much can I invest?

The annual ISA allowance for the 2025/26 tax year is £20,000. The tax year runs from the 6th April to 5th April each year. (A quick reminder that you can’t carry over an allowance from a previous tax year.)
You can have multiple different types of ISAs (e.g. a Cash and Stocks and Shares ISA), however you are responsible for ensuring your contributions (how much you pay into your ISAs) doesn’t exceed £20,000 per tax year. You can also have multiple Stocks and Shares ISAs, if you’d like to try out different ways of investing!

InvestEngine offers a flexible ISA. With a flexible ISA you can withdraw and replace funds in your ISA allowance within the same year without losing any of your £20k allowance. Read more here Flexible ISA rules — so you can withdraw and replace funds within the same tax year without losing allowance

See ISA allowance: How much can I invest?

What kind of ISA does InvestEngine offer?

InvestEngine offers a Stocks & Shares ISA — ideal if you’re looking to invest in a low-cost, diversified portfolio of ETFs.

We don’t currently offer Cash ISAs, Lifetime ISAs (LISAs), or Junior ISAs (JISAs), but you can keep up to date with our upcoming releases on our community.

You can find out more about our ISAs here

Can I transfer my ISA?

Absolutely! You can transfer an ISA from another provider into InvestEngine, and it won’t affect your ISA allowance for the current tax year.

However, please note: ISA transfers may have implications for your investments. For example, if the transfer is completed as cash, your money could be out of the market for a period, meaning you may miss potential gains. Please consider all factors carefully before deciding to transfer. Full terms and conditions apply.

We support:

In-specie transfers in (where available from your provider)*
Cash transfers in and out

* An in-specie transfer in investments means moving your shares or funds to another account without selling them first.

We will endeavour to transfer as many of your current holdings (with your old provider) in-specie as possible. This is subject to:

Your old provider supporting in-specie transfers
The ETFs being available on our platform (you can check our ETF range here )

If you hold ETFs that aren’t currently available in our ETF range, they cannot be transferred. In this case, those securities will be sold by your old provider and transferred as cash.

You can read more about ISA transfers here