Platinum Plus ISA

ISA and Investment limits

Subscription limit

ISAs will be subject to an annual subscription limit. The ISA allowance for 2022/23 is £20,000.

This bond is no longer available to new business. This means that only those customers continuing to pay in by direct debit can take advantage of these limits.

Making a payment

Please make your cheques payable to Royal London Savings Ltd and write your Platinum Plus ISA number on the reverse. If you are topping up your ISA, the money needs to come from a bank account in your name.

Please send your payment to Royal London Savings Ltd, Royal London, 5th Floor, Churchgate House, 56 Oxford Street, Manchester, M1 6EU

Withdrawals and Cashing in

The minimum amount you can withdraw from your Platinum Plus ISA is £200. This does not apply if you:

• withdraw from your Platinum Plus investment held outside an ISA
• withdraw from your Platinum Plus Overflow account at the same time as your Platinum Plus ISA.

You can cash in all, or part of, your investment at any time.

When you do, we need to make sure we pay you a fair value for your investment at that time by applying a Final Bonus, or a Market Value Reduction (MVR). Remember that if you make a partial withdrawal this will lower the value of your investment.

We previously made early withdrawal charges to withdrawals of any contributions made in the last 3 years. The early withdrawal charge was removed with effect from 1st March 2018.

Changes to your premiums

We no longer accept lump sum payments, unless these are ‘top up’ payments into an ISA with existing regular contributions.

You can lower existing contributions (as long as your monthly payments do not fall below £35 a month). You can increase existing contributions only if it's within the ISA subscription limits. You can also choose to stop payments into your Platinum Plus policy and use the value invested to continue to accumulate bonuses.

You will not be able to restart your regular premiums if you choose to stop payments into your policy. To consider these options, call our Customer Contact Centre on 03456 057777.

How we share the profits

When you invest in Platinum Plus, we pool your money together with lots of other investors’ money in our ‘with-profits fund’. A team of experienced investment professionals manages the fund.

Our investment strategy is to achieve growth by investing in different types of assets. These include:

• UK and overseas shares
• government and other bonds
• property
• cash
• alternative investments and more.

Because some people want to invest for longer than others, we make sure that we pay everyone a fair value when they come to cash in.

Profits from the investments made by our expert Fund Managers are added back to the ‘with profits fund’. Then we share them with all the investors, by adding bonuses to their investments.

Your returns are ‘smoothed’ over time, to reduce the impact of the daily ups and downs of the stock market. With-profits investments are a good fit for long-term investors who:

• Want better returns than they can usually get on cash savings
• Don't want to be fully exposed to stock market volatility.

But remember, unlike cash savings, the cash-in value of your investment may go down as well as up. You could get back less than you've invested. Read the Market Value Reduction section of this page for more information.

We may add annual bonuses and review these on a regular basis. Annual bonuses share part of the profits of the fund with policyholders and increase your policy value. You can find more details on your annual statement.

Fees & charges

• There's no initial charge on your Platinum Plus investment.
• We charge you an annual management charge for the yearly expenses of managing your investment.
• We recently simplified the way we apply these yearly charges for premiums paid by regular direct debit. We now apply a flat rate of 1.5% each year of the plan value. We have applied this charge from the start of your plan and this replaces the previous charging structure. This makes sure that we will not charge you any more than we quoted to you when we sold you the plan.
• We'll let you know if we make any changes.
• You can find the yearly expenses charge for lump sum premiums in our RLCIS Platinum Plus ISA and Stand-alone Policies document (PDF.
• You can find more information on withdrawing and cashing-in charges in product details.

Tax treatment of an ISA

• All proceeds are free of income tax and capital gains tax.
• The favourable tax treatment is reflected in the bonuses payable on policies held within an ISA.

Tax treatment of non-ISA investments

The tax treatment of ISAs is based on current legislation and may change in the future.

• Some customers may have invested into a Platinum Plus policy that sits outside the tax-free environment of an ISA – for example, by way of a stand-alone Platinum Plus policy or through an ISA overflow policy. Under these circumstances, the tax treatment of these policies is different to those invested in an ISA.
• Dividends from UK company shares are paid out of taxed profits and are not subject to further tax in the life fund.
• The rate of tax applied to other UK investment income is currently 20%.
• Capital gains on sales of investments are taxed

You can find more information about taxation in our brochure, “Key Features of The Co-operative Platinum Plus”. You will have received this when you invested with us.