Cash ISAs statistics

Where the UK stands with interest-free savings accounts.

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With an Individual Savings Account (ISA) offering tax-free interest on your savings, it has been a popular option for people thinking about financing their futures. For the 2019/20 tax year, the tax-free ISA allowance is £20,000 for adults and £4,368 for juniors, with different types of ISAs available based on the purpose of the account.

Here, we run through a comparison of ISA providers and present how cash ISA accounts have performed for both adult and junior savers.

The latest stats

  • The average amount of money per subscription for 2017/18 was £6,409, of which cash ISAs made up £5,114 (80%)
  • As of December 2018, the average interest rate on cash ISAs was 0.92%
  • As of 2017/18, approximately 15% of UK adults had a cash ISA account

Cash ISAs over time

The graphs below plot the number of cash ISA account subscriptions, the overall amount subscribed in cash ISA accounts and the average amount per subscription.

Unsurprisingly, the values for junior cash ISAs is significantly lower than the corresponding adult accounts over the given time frames. However, the trends presented for adult accounts is often different than from junior accounts.

The overwhelming trend among adult accounts is that, up to 2018, the number of accounts has decreased while the overall subscription amount has remained fairly constant. As the final graph supports, there are fewer accounts overall but, of those people that own cash ISA accounts, more money is being transferred in.

Adult Cash ISA Junior Cash ISA
2012-13 11,682 204
2013-14 10,481 310
2014-15 10,288 365
2015-16 10,118 497
2016-17 8,480 569
2017-18 7,783 636
Adult Cash ISA Junior Cash ISA
2012-13 40,901 294
2013-14 38,821 431
2014-15 60,951 405
2015-16 58,694 522
2016-17 39,191 525
2017-18 39,801 517
Adult Cash ISA Junior Cash ISA
2012-13 3,501 1,442
2013-14 3,704 1,391
2014-15 5,924 1,110
2015-16 5,801 1,050
2016-17 4,622 923
2017-18 5,114 813
In 2018, the average amount held in an account was £5,114 for adults and £813 for juniors. During the 2012–2018 period, this was the lowest amount for juniors; in fact, it’s a 44% decrease on the 2012 numbers. In comparison, the 2018 average amount held for adult accounts was greater than the average value over the time period. Therefore, more juniors are deciding to open cash ISA accounts but appear to be able to afford to hold less in them in 2018. Meanwhile, the same accounts are becoming less popular among adults but these adults are saving more in their accounts.

Sources used

HM Revenue and Customs
The Money Charity

Click here for more research. For all media enquiries, please contact:

Matt Mckenna
UK communications manager
T: +44 20 8191 8806

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