Nick Scarrett, head of pensions and investment at Fair Investment Company comments on Consumer Focus’ super-complaint to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) about the UK cash ISA market.

“Unfortunately, many consumers have been putting up with low cash ISA rates, either because they are not aware of how poor their rates are or because they feel the transfer process is too lengthy and complicated.

“Consumer Focus is saying that there is a lot of cash in very poor yielding products, but there are some very competitive cash ISA products in the market, especially fixed rate deals – if you go with a fixed rate deal, you will never be in the situation where your rate is pulled and you don’t know about it.

“And for those deals that do have introductory offers, at fairinvestment.co.uk we always make it very clear when a rate on our site is introductory and if the rate includes a bonus; we are already being very up front and honest with our customers and agree that this practice should be adhered to by the entire industry.

“We also welcome Consumer Focus’ action on cash ISA transfers, because with other personal financial products like car insurance, home insurance and bank accounts, switching is generally a quick and easy process, so there is no reason that once a consumer has found a better cash ISA deal they should then face unnecessary delays when they want to transfer.

“We would call for less bonus orientated cash ISA deals  and more fixed rate deals – if people are thinking they are going to hold their cash ISA for a considerable period of time, they may as well fix – more often than not you get a better rate, and then that rate can’t change for the duration of the deal, which means you are not going to get caught out by great introductory rates that then fall considerably.”