Bank Accounts

Your product bank account represents your cash holding for each of your James Hay products. This money is held in a pooled bank account in the name of the trustees for SIPP products, or in the name of the provider for ISA, GIA, and Wrap products (excluding Wrap SIPP). 

This pooled bank account also holds money for other clients, and your product's holdings are recorded separately in our records but not in the banks’ records.

Your product bank account is designed to facilitate the movement of money within your James Hay product, including contributions and subscriptions, transfers in and out, investment purchases and sales, as well as for the payment of any withdrawals.

Any charges you incur are also normally paid from the product bank account, including James Hay's charges as well as those due to investment managers, fund providers, financial advisers and other third parties as required.

The Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) protection limit (currently £85,000) applies separately to each bank we use, to protect your money in the unlikely event of the failure of the bank. Please note that money held in fixed term deposit accounts from our SIPP Cash Panel are covered separately by the FSCS, but this limit does include any personal or joint accounts you hold  with banks outside of your James Hay products.

Please also note that cash held in the Wrap Offshore Bond is not covered by FSCS protection, as the product falls under the Isle of Man Compensation of Policyholders scheme.

If we are using more than one bank, we may spread the cash held in your product across multiple banks in order to increase the potential FSCS protection for your money. If a single bank holds more than £85,000 of your money, we will hold this with our highest rated banking providers wherever possible. 

We will only select banks rated by leading ratings agencies in the ‘BBB’ category or higher for this purpose. Please note that we may change this minimum rating from time to time depending on the economic circumstances.

For cash held in the Wrap (excluding Wrap SIPP), Modular ISA, and Modular GIA:
If a bank is unable to pay us back all the client money we hold with them (so there is a shortfall) we have to share that shortfall across all of our customers for whom we are holding client money. If 10% of our pooled cash were with a particular bank and that bank could only repay half of this amount then each customer would have a potential shortfall of 5% of their cash balance. Please note that in practice, if the shortfall is less than £85,000 per client, the FSCS would cover the shortfall amount.

For cash held in SIPP products, for example the Modular iSIPP, iSIPP and Wrap SIPP:
Pooled cash is spread across customers in the same proportion, except where this would cause the balances held by a customer to exceed £85,000 with a bank not approved by us for that purpose. In these circumstances the amount allocated to that customer for that bank would be capped at £85,000. In the event that a bank is unable to pay us back all the money we hold with them, the shortfall would be shared across all customers in proportion to the cash they hold with that bank. Please note that in practice, if the shortfall is less than £85,000 per client, the FSCS would cover the shortfall amount.

The product bank account is designed for holding cash for short periods of time, while your investments are being made or withdrawals are being paid, and so it not considered to be a long term investment option.

There is no minimum balance to be held within your product bank accounts, however you and your financial adviser should regularly review this to ensure that there are sufficient funds available for investments, charges and withdrawals as required.

Having insufficient funds available at the time may prevent us from being able to provide these services to you without delay. Your balance and bank account details can be viewed at any time within your James Hay Online account.