Set to launch in December 2017, Assetz’s Innovative Finance Individual Savings Account (IFISA) will be available as a wrapper on all of its investment accounts.
The platform had previously announced that it expected to release its IFISA wrapper by Q4 2017, and has met that goal just in time after being granted full FCA authorisation in September.
Users will be able to use their £20,000 annual tax-free allowance on the Assetz platform, in addition to being able to transfer in past year’s ISA savings from their cash and shares ISAs.
The scheme will open in December to include all automated Assetz investment accounts, before later including the Manual Loan Investment Account (MLIA) in early 2018. According to Assetz, the inclusion of an MLIA, an account where users can choose their own loan investments, in an IFISA scheme is an industry first.
“Our IFISA will be a great new tax-free investment choice for those that are new to peer-to-peer lending, but we also feel strongly about delivering a product that caters for our thousands of long-standing investors who prefer to choose their own loan investments within the Manual Loan Investment Account. That’s why we were determined to ensure that the MLIA will be allowed in our IFISA shortly after launch,” said Stuart Law, CEO at Assetz Capital.
The platform is one of the largest peer-to-peer lenders outside of the “big three”.
The IFISA wrapper will be open to both new and existing users of the platform, however Law has assured dedicated investors that they will receive priority access to the scheme.
“As previously announced, the IFISA will launch across all of our automatic accounts by the end of 2017 and we’ll keep our investors up to date as we get nearer to the final go-live date. We will also shortly be releasing a queuing system in case we have excess demand for the IFISA that will allow our existing and faithful investors priority access to the tax free returns.”
