Help! My £20,500 ISA has vanished

Mrs K.H. writes: Can you help me find out what has happened to my £20,483 which was in a National Savings & Investments (NS&I) Direct ISA? I asked for this to be transferred to a Lloyds Bank one-year fixed rate ISA. NS&I say it transferred the money, but Lloyds staff say they have not received it. Both parties blame the other, and I have hit a brick wall. I am elderly and at my wits’ end.

I AM not surprised you are worried about the disappearance of such a large slice of your savings. You sent me a copy of NS&I’s closing statement, confirming your ISA cash had been transferred to Lloyds Bank, so I asked both of them to find out exactly where your money had ended up in the banking system. Lloyds immediately accepted that it had taken an unacceptably long time to track down your funds, and the bank rang you to apologise for this.

NS&I was hard on the bank’s heels, telling me just a day later that it had found your £20,483. It was still with NS&I. Officials told me they had sent the payment to Lloyds at the address shown on the bank’s transfer request, but it had been returned. NS&I tried again, using a different address for the bank, but with the same result – the money bounced back. Staff at Lloyds have told me that they have double-checked the addresses and cannot find any problem, but after I contacted them they asked NS&I to try again and this time it worked. The bank said: ‘We are extremely sorry that Mrs H’s ISA transfer took longer than it should have, and we have been working hard to put that right.’ Your new ISA is now open, with interest backdated to ensure you have lost nothing, and Lloyds has also sent you £150 to make up for the worry you experienced.