Property Crowd, a cross-border real estate crowdfunding platform, has launched its Innovative Finance ISA offering just days prior to the April 5th tax cut-off.
Property Crowd describes itself as one of the few “institutional grade” property crowdfunders. Its investors buy into real estate backed bonds with segregated client funds and securities held with independent custodians. These bonds deliver a fixed return at maturity.
The minimum investment amount for the IFISA offering is £5k.
Property Crowd is not a peer-to-peer lender in the regulatory sense. But its bonds are classed as debt securities and so still fit within the IFISA framework, under investment-based crowdfunding rules.
“Investors are crying out for better options in this enduring low-yield environment,” said Rohin Modasia (pictured above), founder and CEO of Global Alternatives. “It’s been a slow start for the IFISA, but ISAs do remain something of a nation’s favourite. Thanks to the UK government’s foresight and our robust business model, we’re able to offer our crowd investors a real alternative to disappointing savings accounts in the most tax-efficient manner possible.”
The IFISA’s “slow start”, as Modasia puts it, is largely due to a protracted authorisation process for the UK’s peer-to-peer lenders. The “big three” – RateSetter,Funding Circle and Zopa – continue to languish under interim permissions, and as such are unable to offer IFISAs to investors.
