Investors flock to Assetz Capital IFISA
ASSETZ Capital has had almost 3,000 investors start the process of setting up an Innovative Finance ISA (IFISA), with those who have already started investing putting an average of nearly £12,000 into the product.
The peer-to-peer lender said on Tuesday that rising inflation, lacklustre interest rates and volatile stock markets are pushing investors towards P2P lending.
“With inflation still around three per cent and most bank interest rates failing to keep up, many people are voting with their feet and moving from savings to investment in order to seek a higher return, albeit with investment risk,” said Stuart Law, chief executive officer of Assetz Capital. “That means many people looking to invest in P2P lending and now the new IFISA tax-free wrapper around it.”
Read more: IFISA special report
He added: “We’re also seeing somewhat of a setback in global stock markets with a Trump-led trade war being the current big concern and people seem to be watching for signs of the long bull run in stocks coming to an end.”
Last month, Assetz Capital said that more than 2,000 people had signed up to its IFISA since December, beating the total number of IFISA investors across the entire market for the 2016/2017 tax year. The new figure of roughly 3,000 investors taking up the IFISA represents more than 10 per cent of Assetz Capital’s 25,000-strong client base.
Assetz Capital’s manual lending ISA launched last week, meaning its investors who wish to manually select their loans can now receive tax-free returns. The lender’s customers could already hold the auto-investment products within the IFISA.
