UK investments and platforms when you live abroad

You can usually keep what you already hold in the UK. Adding to it, or buying anything new, is where it gets fiddly.

The short version

Once you stop being UK resident you can keep your ISA and its tax-free status in the UK, but you can't pay any new money in. Tell your provider when you leave [1].
From 6 April 2027 the cash ISA limit drops to £12,000 for under-65s, inside the unchanged £20,000 overall allowance. It only matters once you're UK resident again [2][3].
Many UK platforms restrict or close accounts for customers abroad. Some let you hold but not buy, some close you down, and the answer often depends on which country you've moved to.
If you live in the EU, a UK firm may be blocked from selling you UK funds, and EU rules mean a fund generally needs an EU-style key information document before it can be sold to you [4].
Your new country usually ignores the ISA wrapper and may tax UK funds harshly. When you come home, the same problem can hit funds you bought abroad [5][6].

Why platforms get twitchy when you move

Selling investments to someone is a regulated activity in the country where that person lives. A UK platform is authorised by the FCA to deal with UK residents. Once you live in Spain, Canada or Singapore, the platform would in principle need permission under that country's rules to keep selling to you, and most don't bother.

Before Brexit, UK firms could "passport" into the EU and serve customers across it. That ended on 31 December 2020, which is why so many Brits in Europe got letters around then. Outside the EU the picture has always been patchy: each firm decides country by country, and the US is the one most platforms avoid entirely because of US securities law.

In practice, platforms fall into a few camps:

What the platform does	What it means for you
Lets you carry on as normal	Rare, and usually limited to certain countries. Read the small print anyway.
"Hold only": no new buys or top-ups	You can sell and take income, but can't add money or buy new funds.
Lets you sell but not reinvest	Dividends are paid out as cash rather than reinvested.
Closes the account	You're asked to sell up or transfer to another provider within a notice period.
Won't open accounts for non-residents	Fine while you're in the UK, a dead end once you've left.

The trap is not telling them. Platforms ask for your country of residence for good reasons, including tax reporting, and an account opened on an old UK address can be frozen when they find out. A UK correspondence address is not the same thing as UK residence.

ISAs once you've left

The ISA rules for leavers are clear on GOV.UK [1]:

You can keep your ISA open, and it keeps its UK tax advantages.
You can't pay into it once you're non-resident. The only exceptions are Crown servants working overseas (diplomats, for example) and their spouses or civil partners.
You must tell your provider as soon as you stop being UK resident.
You can still transfer it to another ISA provider while you're abroad.
You can start paying in again once you're UK resident, within that year's allowance.

The allowance is £20,000 in 2026/27 [1]. There's a change coming for returners to plan around. Regulations made in September 2026 cut the amount you can pay into cash ISAs to £12,000 a year for anyone aged 64 or under at the end of the tax year, from 6 April 2027 [2][3]. The overall £20,000 limit stays, so the rest can go into stocks and shares. Savers aged 65 and over keep the full £20,000 for cash [2]. The same regulations also add a charge on interest earned on cash held inside a stocks and shares ISA, to stop people parking cash there to get round the limit [3].

Two things the ISA rules don't tell you:

Your new country probably doesn't care that it's an ISA. The wrapper is a UK tax relief. France, Spain, Australia, the US and most other countries treat the interest, dividends and gains as ordinary taxable income for their residents. Some will tax gains each year even if you don't sell.
Your provider may not let you stay. "You can keep your ISA" is the law. Whether your provider lets you hold it from abroad is its own choice.

Our guide to ISAs when you move abroad goes into more detail.

What you can and can't buy

UK shares and gilts

Holding individual UK shares from abroad is usually the least troublesome option, because they don't come with the fund paperwork described below. If your platform lets you trade, buying a FTSE share is mostly a question of whether the platform will deal for someone in your country.

UK funds if you live in the EU

The EU's PRIIPs Regulation obliges those who produce or sell packaged retail investment products to give investors a short key information document (KID) of up to three pages, covering risks, costs and the investor the product is aimed at [4]. Most funds sold to retail investors in the EU now need one.

Many UK-domiciled funds and UK-listed ETFs don't produce an EU KID, because they aren't marketed in the EU. Without one, an EU broker generally can't sell them to you, and a UK broker that can still serve you may also refuse to let you buy them. That's why Brits in Europe often find they can sell a UK fund but not buy more of it, and why they end up holding EU-domiciled versions of similar funds instead.

The UK is also replacing its own version of these rules. The FCA's new Consumer Composite Investments regime, with a shorter "product summary", takes full effect on 8 June 2027, after a transition that started on 6 April 2026 [7]. That changes UK paperwork for UK investors. It doesn't change what an EU country requires before its residents can buy.

If you're a US person

If you're an American citizen or green card holder, UK funds, unit trusts and most non-US ETFs are generally treated by the US as PFICs (passive foreign investment companies), which brings punitive tax and heavy reporting. ISAs don't help, because the US doesn't recognise them. Our sister site ExpatStateside explains why foreign funds hurt Americans.

How UK funds look from abroad, and foreign funds from home

The UK has its own offshore fund rules. A fund based outside the UK either has HMRC "reporting fund" status or it doesn't. For a UK resident, gains on a reporting fund are taxed as capital gains, while gains on a non-reporting fund are normally "offshore income gains", taxed as income [5]. HMRC publishes an A to Z list of reporting funds, and your fund manager can tell you a fund's status [5][6].

Other countries have their own versions of this, and from their side your UK OEIC or unit trust is the foreign fund. Depending on the country, UK funds can be taxed on a deemed annual return, taxed less favourably than local funds, or need extra reporting. The rules vary a lot, so a tax adviser who knows both countries can check your case before you buy anything new.

The same logic bites on the way home. If you bought funds abroad, check whether they have UK reporting fund status before you become UK resident again. Selling a non-reporting fund after you're back can turn what you thought was a capital gain into income taxed at your full rate [5]. Selling before you return, or switching to reporting funds, can make a real difference, but get the timing right: if you've been away five years or less, the temporary non-residence rules can tax some gains made abroad in your year of return.

UK tax on your UK investments while you're away

As a non-resident you don't normally pay UK tax when you sell an asset, apart from UK property or land [8]. UK interest and dividends are within the scope of UK tax in principle, but non-residents usually find little or no UK tax is due on them in practice, and the country you live in will generally tax them instead. Interest on gilts is usually free of UK tax for non-residents [8]. Our guide to UK income while you live abroad covers the detail.

Before you leave, and when you come back

Ask your platform, in writing, what happens if you move to your new country. Get the answer before you go.
Use this year's ISA allowance while you're still resident. You can pay in while you're still UK resident, so top up before the move rather than after.
Decide what you'd want to hold for years without topping up. A hold-only account suits a simple global tracker better than a dozen niche funds.
Tell the platform your new address and residence. Then keep a UK mobile number working for security codes.
On your return, update your residence, restart ISA contributions, and check the reporting status of anything you bought abroad.

UK pensions follow their own rules, and moving one abroad needs regulated financial advice: see UK workplace and private pensions abroad. Plenty of people in our community groups for Brits abroad have had the letter from their platform and can tell you how it went.

UK investments from abroad: what your platform will and won't let you do