The House Crowd achieves FCA authorisation

THE HOUSE Crowd is looking to unveil a new website and auto-lending option after achieving authorisation from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) at the end of last year.

The property peer-to-peer lending platform had first applied for full permissions in October 2015 and had previously expressed concerns about delays.

“We initially got advice from our advisory body that we should be applying for certain types of permissions but then the FCA decided we need to also apply for alternative investment fund permissions,” Frazer Fearnhead (pictured), founder of The House Crowd, told Peer2Peer Finance News.

“We got the permissions eventually at the end of December.”

Fearnhead said the platform was working with Innovative Finance ISA manager Goji to get a tax wrapper out before April and said in the coming weeks investors would have access to a new website and auto-lending product offering returns of 7.5 per cent.

“Some like the individual choices and some want the returns on the money without having to think about it,” he added.

“The auto-lend product will pay a lower rate compared with the average 9.2 per cent on manual lending, but the idea is to keep your money working all the time so it should work out with a greater return.”

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