20th September 2019
Crowd2Fund is pleased to announce that they have been formally granted their Advanced Assurance from HMRC for the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) tax relief. This means that now up to £12,000,000 can be invested into the growth of Crowd2Fund under the scheme, from private investors or specialist EIS funds. It is a tremendously generous scheme, through which investors receive excellent tax incentives for investing in businesses, like Crowd2Fund, who offer benefits to the wider economy.
For example, if you invest £20,000 in Crowd2Fund, investors will potentially be eligible to receive up to £6,000 from HMRC in the form of tax relief, depending on investors individual circumstance. Investors are sheltered from paying capital gains tax on any future returns and they could also be protected from losses, with up to £6,300 of loss relief. This means that their financial exposure to Crowd2Fund is potentially reduced to £7,700 while retaining the full value of their shares.
To celebrate this, Crowd2Fund are planning an investment round, releasing additional equity for its users. The funds will be used to grow the platform further through the acquisition of a larger investor community, completion of more deals and improving the returns on the platform, by enhancing the recoveries and credit assessment processes. They are also expanding internationally via the FinTech bridge programme, which is an initiative designed to stimulate FinTech cross-border trade with international markets.
Crowd2Fund has spent the last 12 months refining their business model, now backed up by years of data and evidence, to prove their plan to scale is feasible. By reaching an investor community of 28,000 over the next few years, they will be able to lend more than £210m per year. Their proposition is different from other online lenders, who pool their funds and do not allow investors to choose the businesses they invest in. They also operate an Exchange for investors and allow businesses to reduce the cost of the credit by inviting their customers to invest or by offering tangible rewards.
Next year they are planning to use the remainder of the EIS allowance to conduct a Series A £10m investment round to pioneer the world's first decentralised bank, combining the benefits of a challenger bank with P2P lending. By offering direct investing into entrepreneurs and their AI automated investing system with deposit capabilities and full banking services, they will build a community of entrepreneurial investors and SMEs.
