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Data released this week by Hargreaves Lansdown, the UK’s biggest investment platform, revealed the number of people who are millionaires by the value of assets held in their stocks and shares ISAs is on the rise.
There are now 1,322 ISAs held in their system which total seven figures in value as of December, they said.
That’s an increase of more than 14 per cent from just six months earlier, Yahoo Finance report, with the platform also releasing the names of the companies which are typically held by their ISA millionaires.
Most are blue-chip British companies and those which have a history of dividend payments, which – when compounded over the long term – can add up to impressive gains.
ISAs – individual savings accounts – are products which allow people to save or invest their money in a tax-free environment.
“Some people get into investment in the hope of getting rich quick, but the vast majority of ISA millionaires have built a fortune through the far more reliable approach of getting rich slow,” said Kate Marshall, lead investment analyst at HL.
“They don’t necessarily take enormous risks: many consistently invest as much as possible of their annual allowance, in a diverse and balanced portfolio, every year, for decades.”
Individuals in the UK are allowed to put a maximum of £20,000 per year into their ISAs, spread as they wish across cash ISAs, stocks and shares ISAs, Lifetime ISAs and more.
The ten most popular shares in Hargreaves Lansdown (HL) ISA millionaire accounts were:
- Legal and General
- Phoenix Group
- Aviva
- IG Group Holdings
- Beeks Financial Cloud Group
- BP
- Rio Tinto
- M&G
- Michelmersh Brick Holdings
Several of those are stalwarts of the London Stock Exchange, with insurers, energy companies and mining companies tending to pay out strong dividends – though the share prices themselves can be cyclical.
Over the long term, however, that tends not to be a major concern for investors, as the compounding gains made from reinvesting dividends back into the stock can – but does not always – more than make up for that.
As well as individual shares, HL noted that a wide mix of popular funds figured in most millionaire accounts.
These tended to focus on global companies, though a UK-based income fund also featured. Funds run by Legal & General made up half of the top funds invested in, data showed.
Of those, the Legal & General Global Technology Index Trust has fared best over the past year, returning 37.68 per cent.
