UK peer-to-peer platform Abundance was the largest provider of Innovative Finance ISAs in the 2016/17 tax year.
The firm has focus on 'ethical' investment opportunities including several notable forays into renewable energy such as the AIM-listed tidal power company Atlantis Ocean Energy.
It seems that investors who allocated money into P2P via the new IFISA tax wrapper in the last tax year alloacted mostly to abundance over other providers, selling 1,436 IFISAs, representing £10.5m of investment from the UK public.
With 2000 IFISAs soldf in the period, this means that Abundance sold 72 per cent of all IFISA products last year – representing 62 per cent of the amount invested in the new wrapper.
Of course there is something of a large caveat in that during the period in question only a handful of platforms were authorised to offer the IFISA and therefore this year's numbers may not be quite so one-sided as Bruce Davis, cofounder and joint MD of Abundance points out.
“Our ‘total domination’ of the IFISA market will obviously be short lived now that Zopa has launched its product, but Abundance’s success does underline the public’s increasing desire to invest in assets with important environmental benefits as well as a financial return" he said.
“Abundance investors have now pumped more than £50m into productive ‘win win’ investments, with most new money now going in via our ISA wrapper so the financial returns are tax free. Abundance’s success is very much the good news part of the Innovative Finance ISA story to date,” he added.
