Product providers, financial advisers and the FCA are being urged by the Personal Finance Society (PFS) to ensure that Innovative Finance ISAs are designed and promoted in a way that won’t exploit behavioural biases.
PFS CEO Keith Richards said: “Innovative Finance ISAs pose a very old problem – products that promise high, very specific returns but leave capital at risk.
“People register the high return, but don’t read the warnings about capital at risk. The same was true of split capital investment trusts and precipice bonds in the 2000s. Because people see an interest rate in the same format as a deposit account, they don’t realise that their capital is not protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme in the same way a deposit account would be.
“Behavioural bias tends to mean that the markets reward poor behaviour in the short term, but signposting consumers towards professional advisers is a powerful way to combat this.”
Last week, FCA chair Charles Randell, stated in the wake of the failure of London Capital & Finance, the Innovative Finance ISA policy was being reviewed.
Randell said it was important to ensure that any reviews in this area – including HM Treasury’s own review of minibond policy – take a broad view, to prevent the skimmers and scammers from resurfacing in some other part of the landscape.
NEW BUILD IN FOCUS - NEW EPISODE OF THE MORTGAGE INSIDER PODCAST, OUT NOW
Figures from the National House-Building Council saw Q1 2025 register a 36% increase in new homes built across the UK compared with the same period last year, representing a striking development for the first-time buyer market. But with the higher cost of building, ongoing planning challenges and new and changing regulations, how sustainable is this growth? And what does it mean for brokers?
The role of the bridging market and technology usage in the industry
Content editor, Dan McGrath, sat down with chief operating officer at Black & White Bridging, Damien Druce, and head of development finance at Empire Global Finance, Pete Williams, to explore the role of the bridging sector, the role of AI across the industry and how the property market has fared in the Labour Government’s first year in office.
Does the North-South divide still exist in the UK housing market?
What do the most expensive parts of the country reveal about shifting demand? And why is the Manchester housing market now outperforming many southern counterparts?
In this episode of the Barclays Mortgage Insider Podcast, host Phil Spencer is joined by Lucian Cook, Head of Research at Savills, and Ross Jones, founder of Home Financial and Evolve Commercial Finance, to explore how regional trends are redefining the UK housing, mortgage and buy-to-let markets.
In this episode of the Barclays Mortgage Insider Podcast, host Phil Spencer is joined by Lucian Cook, Head of Research at Savills, and Ross Jones, founder of Home Financial and Evolve Commercial Finance, to explore how regional trends are redefining the UK housing, mortgage and buy-to-let markets.
The new episode of The Mortgage Insider podcast, out now
Regional housing markets now matter more than ever. While London and the Southeast still tend to dominate the headlines from a house price and affordability perspective, much of the growth in rental yields and buyer demand is coming from other parts of the UK.
In this episode of the Barclays Mortgage Insider Podcast, host Phil Spencer is joined by Lucian Cook, Head of Research at Savills, and Ross Jones, founder of Home Financial and Evolve Commercial Finance.
In this episode of the Barclays Mortgage Insider Podcast, host Phil Spencer is joined by Lucian Cook, Head of Research at Savills, and Ross Jones, founder of Home Financial and Evolve Commercial Finance.
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