Covid-19 Crisis, IFISAs, And The Road Ahead For Direct Lending
- Money&Co. CEO Nicola Horlick has pointed to a substantial drop in Innovative Finance ISA (IFISA) inflows this years. She argues the Covid-19 crisis is a major contributor factor to the downturn. Nicola spoke to our friends at P2P Finance News, and we offer their accurate report of a recent interview as a reprise of Nicola’s own views.
Nicola said in the 2019/2020 financial year the business peer-to-peer lending platform had around five per cent of the ISA business than that of the last financial year of 2018/2019. This meant for every £1m put into the lender’s IFISA the year before, approximately £50,000 was put in this year.
This contributed to £9,606,733 in total losses for the 2019/2020 financial year, with the platform losing £421,209 more this year than in the previous financial year.
“I think it’s a combination of two things, some investors preferred cash and when the stock market crashed others invested in stocks and shares because they thought it would recover,” Horlick said.
“Covid-19’s hit our IFISA inflows – I don’t know what happened to others. I don’t think there would have been many IFISAs done in March and April generally without seeing government statistics.”
Horlick added that she is hopeful that the platform would improve on this over the coming year despite uncertainty around what the future holds.
“Who knows, we’ll have to wait until next year,” she said.
Horlick has previously told Peer2Peer Finance News that the Covid-19 crisis has made it harder to find small- and medium-sized enterprise loans that are safe options for P2P investors.
She has also revealed that the platform was lending with caution even prior to the coronavirus, because of a Brexit-induced economic downturn. The platform had decided to only offer secured loans even before the pandemic hit, focusing on music loans and litigation finance.
