MORE MONEY, MORE PROBLEMS
>> 6
Administration costs rack up
RED TAPE WOES
>> 8
P2P’s complex relationship with the FCA
HNW Lending’s Ben Shaw on investors, rules and risk >> 20
ISSUE 80 | APRIL 2023
Exclusive: Largest IFISA providers revealed THE THREE largest Innovative Finance ISA (IFISA) providers in the peer-to-peer lending space that are currently open to new investors are EasyMoney, Folk2Folk and Abundance, exclusive Peer2Peer Finance News research can reveal. P2P property lender EasyMoney tops the list with more than £60m in IFISA capital. It is expecting “a huge amount” of IFISA money to be transferred from providers that wound down their offering such as Assetz Capital, a spokesperson said. “We have continued to attract an impressive volume of IFISA transfers, new deposits and top
ups,” the spokesperson added. “Investor rates were increased at the start of the year and remain at those levels for now. We are always reviewing the industry and assessing where we are in relation to traditional accounts and competitors. We are making improvements to our website and hope to roll these out soon.” Second of the ‘big three’ is the UK’s largest P2P lender in terms of cumulative lending volumes, Folk2Folk. The business lender, which won Business Lender of the Year and P2P Lender of the Year at December’s Peer2Peer Finance Awards, has reported
cumulative lending of £650m, of which £53.5m has been invested via IFISA accounts. The third largest IFISA portfolio belongs to Abundance, the green crowd bonds platform founded by Bruce Davis, who also helped launch Zopa and is a director of the UK Crowdfunding Association. Abundance has around £50m in its IFISA, Davis said, who could not give a more specific figure as the platform had not done its year-end numbers yet. “We have seen £500,000 of inflows this week alone [w/c 13 March] into our Green Municipal investment launch from Westminster council
that pays a low-risk return of 4.2 per cent per annum,” he said. “There is still strong demand for the IFISA especially from those investors seeking diversification from the ups and downs of listed markets.” However he added that the FCA’s prohibition of financial incentives, which was recently introduced as part of its stricter rules around promotions of highrisk investments, had an impact on IFISA inflows this year. The next largest IFISA portfolios belong to property lenders CrowdProperty and Kuflink, at >> 4