RateSetter IFISA has attracted ‘high tens of millions’ of pounds

RATESETTER has revealed that its Innovative Finance ISA (IFISA) has already attracted “high tens of millions” of pounds from investors, in less than three months since launch.

A spokesperson from the ‘big three’ peer-to-peer lender told Peer2Peer Finance News that the firm was “really happy with the levels of engagement” with the tax wrapper so far.

“It’s gone beyond what we expected,” the spokesperson added.

RateSetter opened its IFISA to existing customers on 8 February and to new customers on 1 March. The platform previously reported that it had seen over 5,000 IFISA accounts opened in the first month.

RateSetter has recently been phasing ISA transfers in, to test its processes and ensure a good customer experience prior to a full launch of the function.

It has already invited a handful of investors to transfer existing ISAs into the platform’s product and plans to make an announcement in the first half of this week about opening out the function to more customers.

In a blog post last week, RateSetter also announced that it is establishing a dedicated team for investor customer services and one for borrowers, “so that we can deal with customer enquiries to an even higher standard”.

The comments follow an announcement from fellow ‘big three’ platform Zopa last week that its IFISA had attracted £100m from investors.

Consumer lender Zopa launched its IFISA to existing customers in June 2017, before opening to new customers in January 2018. The platform had created a waiting list for new investors in March 2017 to prevent lending queues from increasing.