What’s a General Investment Account?

A General Investment Account (GIA) lets you put lots of different investments together in one place. They’re largely seen as being flexible as you can pay in as much as you like every year (there’s no limit) and take money out whenever you want.

Unlike a pension or ISA, there’s no tax-free benefits to GIAs, so you might have to pay income tax and/or capital gains tax depending on where your money’s invested (e.g. stocks and shares, bonds etc) and your own personal circumstances. They can come in useful if you’ve used your ISA and pension allowances up and have got some spare cash to invest. And you can always withdraw funds and transfer into another more tax-efficient investment when you’re back under your threshold.

The value of investments and the income they produce can fall as well as rise. You may get back less than you invested.

What are the advantages of a GIA?

As we said earlier, they’re flexible. This means you can choose how much you’ve got invested at any time, what funds or schemes your money’s invested in and you don’t need to have lots of money tied-down to anything long-term if you don’t want to be.

We’ll give you a choice of funds to invest in from with different levels of risk, so you can spread up your portfolio across different schemes, and help you manage things. Just remember, although a higher risk could potentially mean a higher return, the value of investments and the income they produce can fall as well as rise.

To find out more about GIAS, send us a message using the form on the right-hand side of this page. We’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

If you prefer to call us, please ring 01244 47010 . Or send us an email: info@moneytreewm.co.uk