Scottish Friendly

Scottish Friendly is a savings and investment brand. What it sells is a range of plans built around tax-efficient investing: adult ISAs, junior ISAs for children, and insurance-based investment plans held outside an ISA wrapper. It is best known for regular monthly investing aimed at ordinary households, and in 2026 it ran its first ever targeted TV advertising campaign, under the slogan "Together We Grow"¹.

The brand belongs to a mutual insurer. That means the firm has no shareholders: it is owned by and run for the benefit of its members, a structure Scottish Friendly explains in its own guide to mutuals². Its website, www.scottishfriendly.co.uk, is where its current products, terms and charges are published³. This page explains what the brand offers, how its plans are charged, how to deal with the firm, where to complain, and how the regulatory system stands behind you.

Scottish Friendly at a glance

Scottish Friendly is a brand people mostly meet through savings and investment products, and the firm behind it is a friendly society turned insurer with a long history in Glasgow. The FCA Register records that the firm was previously known as Scottish Friendly Assurance Society and, before that, as City Of Glasgow Friendly Society, which places its origins among the friendly societies that grew up in Scotland in the nineteenth century to provide members with savings and protection³.

Today the firm is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority, and its register entry shows a permission for accepting deposits alongside its insurance authorisation³. It is also on the Prudential Regulation Authority's list of insurers incorporated in the UK authorised to carry out contracts of insurance, a list the Bank of England publishes so the public can see which firms are regulated as insurers⁴. For a consumer, the practical significance of all this is simple: Scottish Friendly is a regulated UK financial firm, supervised here, with a register entry you can check yourself before you hand over any money.

The mutual structure is worth understanding, because it shapes what the firm is for. A mutual does not pay dividends to outside investors, so any surplus is retained for the benefit of the membership rather than distributed to shareholders². Scottish Friendly's own material presents this as the basis of its promise to customers, investing "for your goals" rather than for outside owners⁵. Whether a mutual suits you better than a plc is not something the structure alone can answer, but it is the reason the brand describes itself as a society rather than a company.

The brand is UK-wide. Despite the name, nothing about it is limited to Scotland: its products are sold across the country and its regulation is the same wherever in the UK you live. The name is heritage, not a boundary.

What Scottish Friendly offers

Scottish Friendly's business is long-term savings and investment, sold through insurance-based plans. Its website is the authoritative source for exactly what is on offer at any time, because product ranges change³. Broadly, the product types this brand is known for sit in the areas below.

The ISA range is the heart of the offer. Scottish Friendly publishes a plain guide to how ISAs work, a comparison of cash ISAs versus investment ISAs, and an explanation of how the ISA limit works across the tax year⁹. Its investment ISAs put your money into funds that rise and fall with the markets, unlike a cash ISA, and the firm's own material sets out that difference so you can judge which type suits your circumstances¹⁶.

For children, the junior ISA offer goes beyond the plan itself. The firm explains how junior ISAs work, how many a child can have, and how to transfer a junior ISA from another provider¹¹. There is a welcome gift payment for new junior ISA customers, on published terms²⁰, and an option to add a My Choice policy to a child's junior ISA²¹. Families trying to trace a Child Trust Fund from the 2000s can find help on the firm's support pages²², and there is specific guidance for grandparents who want to save or invest for a grandchild²³.

Two features of the wider offer stand out. Some plans carry an investment guarantee, which the firm describes on its own terms, and ISA customers can be entered into an ISA prize draw²⁴. For people new to investing, the firm publishes a first-time investor guide that walks through the basics before you commit money²⁶. Two things are worth holding in mind when you look at all this. First, this is an insurer, not a bank: it does not offer current accounts, and money paid into its plans is invested rather than held as a deposit. Second, because its plans are insurance-based, the way they are charged and the way they are protected both differ from ordinary savings accounts, and the rest of this page explains how.

How charges work with an insurance-based plan

Scottish Friendly's investment plans are insurance-based, and that shapes how you pay for them. With this type of plan you do not receive a bill for charges. Instead, the charges are deducted from the plan itself: they come out of the money you have paid in and the returns it earns, so the value you see is already net of what the firm takes. The practical effect is that charges reduce how much of your money is actually invested and how quickly it grows.

Because charges are taken inside the plan, they are easy to overlook. The firm publishes its charges on its website, and it also publishes an enhanced disclosure of fund charges and costs, which breaks down what you pay in more detail than the standard documents require²⁷. These are the figures to check, because this page carries no product rates or fees. When you read them, look for three things:

• what the charges are, as a stated amount or percentage, for the plan you are considering²⁷
• when each charge applies, whether at the start, annually, or on exit, and whether any of them fall away after a period²⁷
• the underlying fund costs, which sit on top of the plan's own charges and are set out in the enhanced disclosure²⁸

This charging structure is common to insurance-based investment plans across the market, not unique to this firm. What it means for you is that comparing plans means comparing charges as well as everything else, and asking what you get for what you pay. The firm's own site is where today's figures live.

Using and contacting Scottish Friendly

Scottish Friendly's website, www.scottishfriendly.co.uk, is the hub for dealing with the firm: product information, terms, account servicing and contact details are published there³. Because contact arrangements, opening hours and service channels change, the site is the reliable place to find the current phone number, postal address or online account access before you need them.

The firm also runs a support hub covering the practical sides of holding a plan. As well as the product guides already mentioned, it includes help on staying safe online, guidance for customers facing mental health difficulties, and support for people experiencing domestic abuse, including how to manage finances safely in that situation²⁹. These pages exist because money problems and personal crises often arrive together, and they are free to read whether or not you hold a plan.

When you deal with any financial firm, a few habits protect you:

• Check you are on the firm's genuine website, using the address recorded on the FCA Register rather than one from an email or advert³.
• Keep the documents you are given when you open a plan, because they set out the terms you and the firm are both bound by.
• If someone contacts you claiming to be from the firm and asks you to move money, hang up and contact the firm yourself through its published details.

Complaints: the firm first, then independent help

If something goes wrong, the process is the same as with any UK financial firm, and Scottish Friendly sets out its own complaints procedure on its website³³. The route runs in a fixed order:

1. Complain to Scottish Friendly first, through the contact routes on its website, giving the details of what has gone wrong and what you want done³³.
2. Keep a record of what you send and when, and of anything the firm sends back.
3. If the firm's answer is not satisfactory, or it does not reply within the time it is allowed, take the complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service, the free independent body that settles disputes between consumers and financial firms³³.

The ombudsman looks at whether the firm treated you fairly, and its decisions can require the firm to put things right. How this route works, and the time limits that apply, is set out in our guide to consumer protection.

How money with Scottish Friendly is protected

Protection for money with Scottish Friendly comes from the regulatory system rather than from the firm's own promises. The firm is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority, with firm reference number 110002, and that authorisation has been in place since 1 December 2001³. It is also regulated by the Prudential Regulation Authority as a UK-incorporated insurer⁴. Authorisation is what puts a firm inside the rules: the requirements on how it conducts business, how it treats customers, and what happens when things go wrong.

Because its plans are investments, their value can go down as well as up, and regulatory protection does not cover investment performance. What the system protects against is the firm failing or wrongdoing. The UK's compensation scheme for financial services, the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, covers customers of authorised firms that fail, and Scottish Friendly publishes its own FSCS information page explaining how the scheme applies to its plans³⁴. What the scheme covers depends on the type of product; insurance-based investment plans are treated differently from bank deposits. Before you rely on any protection, check the current position on the scheme's own website, and read our guide to consumer protection for how the system works as a whole.

The first step for any consumer is verification. The FCA Register entry for this firm is public: it shows the trading name Scottish Friendly, the authorisation, the permission for accepting deposits, and the website address, so you can confirm you are dealing with the regulated firm and not an imposter³.

Scottish name, UK-wide regulation

The firm's history is written in its previous names: Scottish Friendly Assurance Society, and before that City Of Glasgow Friendly Society³. The Scottish identity is genuine heritage, but it has no effect on the rules that apply. Scottish Friendly is authorised and regulated on a UK-wide basis, and a customer in Cardiff, Belfast or London has exactly the same regulatory standing as one in Glasgow.

The same is true in reverse: Scottish consumers dealing with this firm get the same UK-wide protections, not a separate Scottish regime. Where financial rules do differ between the UK's nations, it is in areas like benefits and care funding, not in the regulation of insurers and investment firms, and our guide to how the rules differ across the UK covers where those differences actually arise. For this firm, there is one regulator, one register entry and one set of rules, wherever you live.

The brand's recent public presence reflects that reach. Its first targeted TV campaign, "Together We Grow", launched in 2026¹, and in the same year the firm reported an 84% year-on-year increase in the first quarter and published research finding that seven in 10 women worry about their everyday outgoings³⁵. A growing brand is neither a reason to buy nor a reason to avoid, but it is part of what a customer arriving at this page will have seen and heard.