Northern Rock adds helpful ISA video guide to new savings website
Northern Rock has enhanced its interactive new savings website with an animated video guide to help savers steer their way through the ISA maze.
To coincide with the beginning of the new tax year on Wednesday this week, when the individual tax-free Cash ISA subscription limit increased to £5,340 for this tax year, Northern Rock has now added the informative four minute guide to its recently revamped savings and investment website - northernrock.co.uk/savings.
The guide is designed to help customers make the most of their money in an accessible way, by highlighting the benefits of tax-free savings products and telling them exactly how a Northern Rock Cash ISA works.
The colourful video guide, which is also available via the bank's YouTube channel at youtube.com/northernrockchannel, covers key questions such as ‘What is an ISA?’, ‘How does a cash ISA work?’ and, ‘Are you able to transfer your existing ISA?’.
Northern Rock offers a range of Cash ISAs, all with competitive rates, including online products and Fixed Rate accounts as well as instant-access and variable rate products. All Northern Rock ISA products allow transfers in from other ISA providers and none of Northern Rock’s Cash ISAs have any bonus rates attached.
Andy Tate, Customer and Commercial Director at Northern Rock said: “This video guide adds a new dimension to what is already a highly interactive tool.
“The savings website was developed with the aim of improving the process of evaluating and applying for a savings product for our customers, and this new guide enhances this further by getting important and sometimes complex information across about ISAs in a straightforward and enjoyable way.
“We know that our customers prefer catch-free ISA products to those with short term bonuses, as it saves them having to move their funds at the end of a given period. So we’ve designed our ISA range to be as simple and straightforward as possible.
“Our research has shown that four in 10 people who have an ISA earn less than 1% interest, and one in 10 people earn less than 0.1%, so we also hope this guide will point people to the fact that Northern Rock provides a competitive choice of tax-free options to make their money work harder for them, whatever they are saving for.”
Further detail about Northern Rock’s range of ISA products is available on the new website, which is populated with useful advice and information for different savings customer groups, financial planning information and at-a-glance guides to help people choose between different types of savings account.
The site also includes a range of interactive tools such as a jargon buster and budget planner to help take the complexity out of selecting the right savings product for your own individual circumstances, and a product calculator for each of Northern Rock’s products, including its Cash ISAs, to help work out the estimated return on investment.
Northern Rock customers also benefit from the bank’s unique savings promise. This is a commitment to our customers that we will provide a minimum of two months’ written notice of any reduction to the interest rate on their account. Where customers have a notice period for access to their funds of greater than two months, we will give them that equivalent notice period of any reduction to their interest rate. We will also write to all savings customers at least once a year with details of all our available variable rate savings accounts. And we will give savings customers a minimum of two months’ written notice of any changes to the terms and conditions of their account.
*The tax-free rate is the contractual rate of interest payable where interest is exempt from income tax.