Why has Virgin Money held up an Isa transfer to Lloyds for four months

My father died last September and after the grant of probate in January this year, as executor, I arranged the transfer of his cash Isa with Virgin Money to a Virgin account in my mother's name as per his will.

My mother is in a nursing home and I hold Power of Attorney and manage her affairs.

As the Virgin Money Isa has a low interest rate and Virgin Money only allows attorneys to issue instructions by post, I decided to transfer the funds from Virgin Money to my mother's Lloyds Bank Isa.

The nursing home fees are almost £7,000 every four weeks and my parent's property has not yet sold, so we require every penny of income to pay the fees.

But since January we have been unable to access the income from my father's Virgin Money Isa as Lloyds has been unable to complete the transfer of these funds.

Why is the transer taking so long?

Helen Kirrane of This is Money replies: You would think the transfer of an Isa from one establshed bank to another would be smooth enough.

But Isa transfers between providers can be thwarted by old technology or the fact that different providers use different systems for transfers.

For example, the majority of transfers from Virgin Money stocks and shares Isas are processed by default as a cheque and posted to the new provider while other providers use electronic transfers.

You requested to transfer the Isa from Virgin Money to Lloyds on Janury 10. But four months later when you contacted This is Money, the transfer had still not moved forward.

Given that a transfer from one cash Isa to another is supposed to take no more than 15 calendar days and no more than 30 calendar days for other types of Isas, according to HMRC rules, it's clear this is a huge hold-up.

Virgin Money says it never received a transfer request to move your mother's funds out of the account and into Lloyds.

You were bounced around between Virgin Money and Lloyds, with both providers insisting the issue was the problem of the other.

You were told that Lloyds sent the transfer request via the interbank system to Clydesdale bank, but the automatic system rejected it as the Virgin Money details are not recognised by Clydesdale.

Clysedale Bank acquired Virgin Money in 2019 but retained the Virgin Money brand.

Virgin Money confirmed as much when it looked into your case at This is Money's request. It said it could not find a record of your transfer being submitted with the likely reason being because the request didn’t have the correct details included, therefore its systems were not able to make a match.

Your most recent request, received by Lloyds on 14 April was again sent to Clydesdale on 25 April, where it was rejected again after which you got in touch with This is Money.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time we have heard of very long Isa transfer delays like yours.

In November 2023, almost £1million worth of Isa transfers went 'missing' at NatWest after the bank became overwhelmed by the volume of savers requesting to transfer their Isas into its best buy two-year cash Isa.

Given the rules say transfers between a cash Isas should take no longer than 15 days I think the delay you have faced is very poor.

Virgin Money said the issue has now been resolved and it will process the transfer to Lloyds. You told me it has also agreed to backdate interest to January 10 when you originally requested the transfer.

A Virgin Money spokesman replies: After a thorough review, we found no record of a transfer request being submitted to us. It could be that the request didn’t have the correct details included, therefore our systems haven’t been able to make a match.

Our team contacted the customer to confirm the correct account details needed for Lloyds to request the transfer. We’ve also reached out to our senior contact at Lloyds to help expedite the process once the customer submits the request using the confirmed information.

We’ve arranged to call the customer next week and will continue to monitor the account closely, keeping them updated throughout the process until the transfer is complete.