Guest blog: ISAs With Added Impact
Over the last few weeks, banks have been falling over themselves to get their hands on your money. Every year billions of pounds are deposited in ISAs as people make the most of their annual tax-free savings allowance before the tax-year ends on 5 April. In the 2010–11 tax-year alone that figure was around £54 billion.
Sadly, much of it is unlikely to end up doing a lot of good in terms of its social and environmental impact as mainstream banks compete aggressively for the nation’s savings. But thankfully there is an alternative where your ISA can have a real positive impact. A handful of banks — championed by Move your Money — have a more enlightened approach which can mean your ISA benefits more than just the big five’s balance sheets. This isn’t just a theoretical statement or a way to get back at the big banks — the money that savers deposit with sustainable banks like Triodos can and does have a huge impact, by providing funds to support the organisations that are driving forward the sustainable real economy.
At Triodos Bank we want to try and help make this real and tangible for savers, one way to do this is to show the impact of <a/ href=”http://www.triodos.co.uk/en/about-triodos/what-we-do/who-we-lend-to/">businesses and projects we lend to. For example £1,000 lent to the relevant sectors with Triodos Bank is enough to power around one UK home with renewable energy, create 352 organic meals or enable 172 visits to cultural venues. Not hugely significant figures in themselves, but multiply that £1,000 and its potential impact by 54 million, to get to the amount invested in ISAs in 2010–11, and you can start to see just how great that impact could be.
This really shows the power that one person’s savings or ISA allowance can have, and suggests what we could do together if more people also took action. The ISA bonanza isn’t over, with just as stiff competition expected from banks trying to get hold of your tax-free savings in the 2012/13 tax-year. Just consider the impact it could be having when they do.
Huw Davies, from Triodos Bank
Originally published in April 2012 at moveyourmoney.org.uk
