1. How do I open an IFISA with Proplend and ‘Subscribe’?
Proplend’s IFISA is now freely available to new and existing customers. Visit the investor registration page to open a flexible ISA with Proplend and start earning tax-free returns from our peer to peer loans.
> Opening your Proplend ISA – In just 5 minutes
- Complete our brief registration form taking care to complete all required fields including your National Insurance Number. This includes agreement of our ISA Terms (and Conditions) and Declaration.
- The information you provide will enable us to automatically set up an ISA for you including (in most cases) automatically verifying your identity as we’re required to do.
- When you have completed the form you will be invited to log into your Proplend dashboard using the login credentials you provided during the registration process. If we haven’t been able to automatcially verify your identity then we will ask you to provide additional verification documentation before funding your account.
- Upon logging in we’ll ask you to provide us with details of a bank account in your name to associate with your Proplend ISA. You will not be able to deposit funds in your ISA (subscribe) until we have these details as we’ll need to verify the source of your initial deposit.
- If you are initially funding your Proplend ISA with an ISA transfer, you won’t have to provide bank account details at this time but it normally makes sense to provide them at outset so it doesn’t cause any delays when you do later look to subscribe or withdraw funds.
- If you have opened a ‘Classic’ account with us first – you’ll also be able to open an ISA from your Classic account dashboard – Look out for the ‘Create ISA account’ action box.
> Subscribing to your Proplend Innovative ISA:
- Click the ‘Banking’ tab from your ISA Dashboard.
- Complete the web form to tell us which bank account your subscripton will be coming from (and where any withdrawals will be paid to).
- The ‘Deposit Money’ tab should now display our Client Money account details where you can send your subscription funds to. You’ll be asked to tell us how much you’re going to subscribe so we can look out for it.
- Initiate the payment from your bank taking care to include your unique IFISA Lender ID as the payment reference in the format LENDxxxx-ISAxxx.
You can also fund your Proplend IFISA with transfers of existing ISAs – see 6. below for more information.
2. How soon can I invest to loans after my money is received?
We’ll let you know as soon as your ISA subscription or transfer has been received. By completing the deposit advice form (on the banking page) every time you send money to us you can help us credit your account quicker – we’ll be sure to look out for it clearing with us. You can then hand-select the loan(s) you want to invest in.
3. What is the annual ISA (subscription) allowance?
The maximum allowance for ISA ‘subscriptions’ for the current tax year (2020-21) is £20,000. This allowance represents the total limit you can split between the different ISA types and Managers – it is not the limit for each ISA.
Any of your allowance you don’t use between 6 April and the following 5 April will be lost (foregone), with a new allowance available from 6 April of the following year. The annual ISA allowance is subject to change each tax year.
4. What is the minimum investment to Proplend IFISA?
Proplend loans are typically split into £1,000 parts so you will initially need to subscribe and/or transfer at least £1,000 to your IFISA before you can invest. If you already have a balance on account with us you can just deposit as much as you need to invest.
For Proplend Loan Exchange investments (of active loans that are mid-term) you’ll also need to pay accrued interest for the month to date when buying each loan part – this way you receive all interest for your loan part(s) on the interest payment date. There’s no accrued interest to pay where you invest from outset of a loan (‘In Funding’ loans).
5. How do I make an ISA ‘Transfer’ to Proplend?
ISA Transfers In are fully digitalised with Proplend. To transfer an ISA from another provider, once you are registered and logged in you go to Banking/ISA Transfer page on your dashboard and provide the additional details required. Once submitted that will generate a completed ISA Transfer Form which will be emailed to you to sign electronically and provides a signed copy to us automatically. We then start the transfer process.
We accept partial or full transfers from existing ISAs and don’t charge any fees for transfers. We’ll let you know when we have received the transfer payment and allocated it to your ISA account. You’ll then be ready to invest the transferred funds.
6. How do I transfer out of Proplend IFISA?
You will need to complete your new ISA Manager’s transfer in form and send it to them in the first instance. They will contact us directly to formally accept the transfer and initiate the process. Like any ISA provider, we can only transfer cash to your new provider, so you’ll need to sell some or all your Proplend loans (via the Proplend Loan Exchange) to free up the required funds for us to transfer.
You can choose to transfer some or all of your pot out of your Proplend IFISA.
7. Can I track the progress of my transfer?
Once you have sent your transfer form to the receiving ISA Manager – they will deal directly with the transferring ISA Manager. Contact the transferring provider for updates on progress and to ‘chase’ them if you think the process is taking longer than it should. The process should typically take 2-4 weeks depending on the transferring ISA type. Expect the process to take longer where existing holdings have to be sold first.
8. Is the Proplend ISA flexible?
Yes – we adopted flexible ISA rules from outset. Flexibility means you can replace any money withdrawn from the ISA before the end of the same tax year without the deposit being considered as new ISA subscriptions. You don’t have to return the whole amount or know how much of you’ll be returning at the time of the withdrawal. This keeps your options open.
Any amount withdrawn that is not returned by the end of the tax year will simply be treated as a permanent withdrawal. You can withdraw current and past year ISA funds flexibly from your Proplend IFISA and the flexible amount available for withdrawal is reset at the beginning of each tax year.
Remember – your available balance is the amount you hold as cash not the total value of your ISA. You can increase the available balance by selling loan investments and it will naturally increase from time to time as loans are repaid and interest earned. You can make loan investments available for purchase before the end of the loan term through the Proplend Loan Exchange.
9. Do I have to reclaim tax on my ISA income?
We pay loan interest to you (gross) without deducting any tax. You don’t have to pay tax on ISA income so it avoids any reclaims being required. You don’t have to declare ISA (interest) income on an annual tax return either.
Proplend is not authorised to provide tax advice but we can point you in the right direction for more info. Visit HMRC’s ‘How ISAs work’ page.
10. What happens if I die?
New HMRC rules from 6 April 2018 mean that on death your ISA will be designated as the ‘continuing account of a deceased investor’. No new subscriptions or flexible replacement deposits can be made to the account but existing investments can continue and income will continue to be earned tax-free for up to three years.
Your account will retain its status (as a continuing account of a deceased investor) until arrangements for your estate have been concluded, or the account is closed (whichever is soonest).
We do not offer Additional Permitted Subscriptions (where the value of a deceased’s ISA can be paid to a surviving spouse’s ISA). For more information visit HMRC’s ‘If you move abroad or die’ page.
11. What happens to my ISA if I leave the UK?
Leaving the UK may mean you lose your right to subscribe to ISAs – it depends on your circumstances. For further information visit www.gov.uk. If you’re changing your primary address (even within the UK) you should contact us to let us know.
A few key points to note on residency and eligibility to subscribe …
> You can’t open an ISA or subscribe to an ISA in a tax year where you have not been UK resident. UK resident means at any point during a tax year – if you were resident at any point during a year, you can open an account or subscribe
> UK resident includes those (and their spouses/civil partners) who perform duties as a crown employee serving overseas
> You don’t have to close your ISAs while you are non-UK resident but you are obliged to notify your ISA Managers if you cease to be UK resident
> Flexible ISA replacement subscriptions can be made during a period of non-UK residency as can flexible (or permanent) withdrawals
Note: Under the rules of continuous application, you will need to re-apply to subscribe to your existing Proplend ISA if you have skipped a year of subscribing to us (whether due to residency or another reason). The year in which you open an ISA doesn’t count as a “Gap Year” if you don’t make any scubscriptions – it’s effectively a grace year because it isn’t a full year.
Re-applying is simply a case of re-agreeing to our ISA terms and declaration – you’ll find a link to do so in your ISA dashboard ‘Actions’. For example if you opened a Proplend ISA in 2018-19 but didn’t subscribe to us during the 2019-20 tax year, you’ll need to follow the ‘Re-apply to subscribe’ action on your dashboard from the start of the new tax year – HMRC rules mean we won’t be able to accept any new subscriptions until you do.
12. How many types of ISA can I hold?
You can hold ISAs of all types and split your annual subscription allowance between those different types. You can also hold ISA monies from previous tax years across the ISA types.
However, you can only subscribe new money to one ISA of each type per tax year. That is one Cash ISA receiving current year subscriptions, one Stocks and Shares ISA receiving current year subscriptions and one IFISA receiving some of your current year subscriptions.
You can open more than one of each type in a single tax year if you’re using the additional Cash ISAs, Stocks and Shares ISAs and IFISAs to invest past year ISA monies only (by transferring funds from an existing ISA provider).
13. How can I close my Proplend IFISA?
If you want to close your Proplend ISA, you’ll need to sell all current loan investments (via the Proplend Loan Exchange) and let us know what you want us to do with the balance. You can either request for it all to be transferred to another provider, withdraw it all (where it will no longer be considered ISA money) or withdraw some and request that the rest is transferred elsewhere.
Emptying your Proplend ISA is not the same as closing it, so you’ll need to specifically tell us that you’d like us to close it. If you have withdrawn funds from your Proplend IFISA and transferred funds to another ISA Manager before you returned all withdrawn funds, it may be possible to return the funds to us within the same tax year without this payment being considered as new subscriptions.
14. Do I need to ‘sign up’ for a Proplend IFISA every tax year?
No – you only need to open one IFISA with Proplend. The same IFISA can hold different loan investments and ISA monies from past and current years. You will be required to agree to our ISA Terms and declaration when you first sign up for our ISA and potentially re-agree to them if you miss a complete year of subscribing at any point. We’ll also let you know each time our platform terms and conditions change, so you have the opportunity to review them.
15. What information do you report about my IFISA?
We are required to report certain information about your ISA to HMRC each year. This includes the amount subscribed, a valuation of your ISA holdings at the end of the tax year (cash and the face value of any active loans), as well as some basic personal details to identify you. The process is entirely secure and your details are not compromised or shared with any other third parties.
16. Can I transfer in existing (non-ISA) loans into my IFISA
Unfortunately not – ISA rules don’t allow non-ISA peer to peer loan investments to be transferred (‘in-specie’) into an IFISA. You can sell the loans and subscribe the proceeds into your ISA where it can buy other loan parts. A 0.5% fee is payable on the sale of loan parts (before the end of the term) through the Proplend Loan Exchange (PLE).
17. Do you provide Junior ISAs or Lifetime ISAs?
No – ISA regulations don’t permit P2P lending investments within Junior ISAs or Lifetime ISAs.
