[ISA Cash Transfer in From Previous Broker]

If you want to transfer more than £20,000 in one tax year and not lose the tax free status of your money, then there is only one way to do it. Log in to IG, go to your ISA account, choose the "ISA transfers" menu item and follow the instructions - which look like this:

Honestly though, unless you don't care about when the transfer takes place, I would think twice about doing it at the moment. Some ISA providers have temporarily suspended processing of transfers due to reduced staffing numbers - and I wouldn't expect IG to be prioritising them either. Don't believe the "14 days" for even one minute!

[Live account pending]

So, some other things to note:

If you have used the forum before account approval, you will likely lose the forum nick you chose as you have to re-register for the forum. Your old nick will still be floating around, you just won't have access to it (or perhaps it is just not linked to your account, but you can still login separately, no idea).

After eventually having my share account approved, I was able to open an ISA account without further delays.

Although not immediately necessary, I decided to verify my bank account for withdrawals. This involves submitting a screenshot of an online banking statement from your bank account, which is then manually verified again. This verification only took a few hours.

I made a small test deposit by bank transfer into one of my accounts to verify I was doing things correctly. The deposit arrived into the account overnight.

[account approval]

12 minutes ago, reborn537 said:

I am still having the same problem, it has been well over a month!

See my post here as arnm. I'd guess you are close to being approved at this stage, if all documentation requirements have been fulfilled.

[Live account pending]

On 24/04/2020 at 01:00, mvfc22 said:

I am also waiting, it says that it usually takes 2 hours, I am hoping I will also not have to wait this long to get my account activated...

Just a reality check for you. I applied for a share account on the 22/3/2020, my account has finally been approved and opened as of this morning, 27/4/2020.

Posts to the forum won't speed it up. Emails won't speed it up. I didn't try waiting in a phone queue, but other posters have. All you can do is sit tight, or go to a different provider.

On 24/04/2020 at 14:22, spawlowski said:

Same boat here - Waiting 4 days now for the account activation. Wrote to them on two different email support addresses with no reply either. I know we are in "special circumstances" but it takes little effort to inform customers on the ways company is dealing with it.

IG's communication is pretty dire if my experience is anything to go by. It takes about a week to get a first reply to an email, might be a little faster for follow-ups. Don't make the mistake of using a mail forwarding email address (can't send, only receive) as your IG account address, that causes no end of issues with them claiming data protection, even though I didn't even ask at any point for anything account confidential. Had to change it to a different address in the end.

I don't feel they accurately deal with emails - the responses to me so far kinda miss the mark and just feel a bit sloppy.

On 24/04/2020 at 14:22, spawlowski said:

I know that Degiro is down on staff members (official info on their site) and they're having a queue system for new applicants - you just get the number in the queue (currently like 7k+ ) and info that once it will be close to your turn they will contact you via email to finish the process. I guess it's the same issue here and all we can do is seat and wait... shame it is not communicated. 

 

Absolutely, this is what IG needs. Stop telling people that document verification takes around 2 hours when it takes a week. Tell people that applications are queued and tell them the current queue length and processing time of >1 month. The reason why their customer support is so busy and unable to reply promptly is because they are not providing the correct information up front on the website. It's not rocket science.

Oh, and they will want to have additional personal wealth information sent to them by email instead of collecting it during the sign up process - another drag on customer service.

On 26/04/2020 at 07:57, ophirian said:

Hi, I just want to check if there is any support assistance wherein I can call/chat regarding my pending live account approval?

Don't waste your time and get stressed. Either wait or go elsewhere.

If I hadn't send my ID documents to IG at the beginning, I wouldn't have waited the >month time period and just gone elsewhere.

Just for a comparison: I opened up an account with another financial provider in the mean time, not brokerage but it had all the same verification requirements. It took ~2 hours, including human verification of ID document photos and a bit of email communication. Says it all really.