How does transferring an investment to Cushon work?

Introduction

Transferring your existing investments to {{ourName}} gets everything in one place, makes it easy to switch into one of the diversified portfolios from our comparison tables, and gives you free CushonMe monitoring and alerting to help keep an eye on your investments.

Many of the most popular providers (eg. Hargreaves Lansdown and Fidelity) support easy transfers (known as TeX). This means that all you need to provide is your account number and we can look after the rest. You can check if your provider supports easy transfers by just typing in their name.

Key things to know

• We make no charge for transferring investments. However, it is possible that your existing provider may apply a charge.
• Transferring an ISA or Junior ISA does not affect its tax benefits. Provided it's done via our transfer process, it doesn't count as "cashing in" the ISA so all future income and gains will still be tax-free.
• Transferring a general investment may create a capital gains tax liability. Transferring a general investment will mean it is cashed in and then the proceeds re-invested, which may create a capital gain.
• Transfers may require you to sign an authorisation form. If your current provider doesn't support electronic transfers then we'll fill this in for you, so you just need to sign and return it. The transfer then typically takes a few weeks from when the form is received.
• Direct debits cannot be transferred across automatically. Your existing direct debit will be cancelled, the investment will be transferred, and you then need to set up the direct debit again. (Sorry, we know this is a pain and are working to make this easier.)

Step by step guide to transfers

The whole process can take a few weeks. Here is how it works step by step:

1. Fill in the details of your existing provider on our transfer page

2. Choose an investment from our comparison tables to switch into as part of the transfer process

3. Confirm you want to transfer and accept the terms and conditions

4. If necessary, we will send you a pre-filled transfer authority form which you need to sign and return to us in the envelope provided

5. We will contact your existing provider and instruct them to sell your existing investments (for ISAs and Junior ISAs, this all happens within the ISA so does not affect the tax benefits. For general investments it may create a capital gain.)

6. The cash proceeds of the sale will then be transferred across to us and used to purchase the investment you selected from our comparison tables (this can take a few days, during which you won't be exposed to stock market gains or losses)

7. That's it! CushonMe will automatically start monitoring your investment