The ThinCats Innovative Finance ISA – Take the survey 18/02/2016

The Innovative Finance Individual Savings Account (or “IFISA”) is due to be launched on 6th April but they can only be offered by peer to peer platforms that have achieved full FCA regulation and so far none have achieved that status.

ThinCats plans to offer its own IFISA product as soon as we have achieved full regulation and we are expecting demand to be very high. It is likely that we will need to limit applications and those who have pre-registered will be given priority. If demand is very strong active ThinCats members will be given top priority. You can register your interest by completing this short survey.

How the ThinCats ISA will operate

• The ThinCats ISA wills only be appropriate for UK Income Tax payers who are over 18 years of age and is not suitable for businesses, pension funds or non-tax payers.

• You will need to open a dedicated ThinCats ISA account (separate from any other ThinCats account). Your ThinCats ISA account will only be able to accept cash deposits and you will not be allowed to transfer existing loans from other ThinCats accounts into it. The only way of transferring your existing ThinCats loans will be to sell them on the secondary market and transfer the cash.
• You can spread your annual ISA allowance of £15,240 across the three different types of ISA (Cash, Stocks & Shares and Innovative Finance) but you can only have one of each type each year. ThinCats will only be offering the IFISA. If you exceed your ISA allowance in any one year you will lose the tax relief on the excess investment and you will be personally responsible for keeping within the limits.
• We expect that you will be able to transfer your existing (old) ISAs into a ThinCats ISA and retain your tax relief (providing they are in the form of cash when the transfer takes place).