RateSetter launches countdown for 2018 IFISA

By Emily Nicolle on Friday 1 December 2017

Alternative Lending

The peer-to-peer lender has announced its plans to launch its IFISA before the end of the current tax year.

RateSetter has now confirmed that it expects to launch the new product in February 2018, with an exclusive two-week priority access period for existing lenders.

It’s the last of the “big three” in peer-to-peer to launch an Innovative Finance Individual Savings Account (IFISA), after Funding Circle’s offering went live yesterday and Zopa’s IFISA launched back in June.

Once the tax wrapper launches, investors will have until 5 April 2018 (the end of the current tax year) to invest their 2016-17 ISA tax-free allowance of up to £20,000 in a RateSetter ISA.

The platform has also announced that in the new tax year, RateSetter will be accepting ISA transfers, meaning that customers with cash ISAs, stocks and shares ISAs and other Innovative Finance ISAs will be able to transfer funds from these accounts into the RateSetter ISA while retaining the benefit of the tax-free wrapper.

So it would seem the competition is on to secure higher investor numbers with the new tax wrapper product. Outside of the “big three”, Assetz Capital also announced that it will be launching its own IFISA next month.

RateSetter was granted full FCA authorisation in October this year.

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