UK Continues To Clear The Path For Growth Of Alternative Finance

Draft legislation has now been published to allow bad debt relief for investors in peer to peer loans, in addition to the new Personal Savings Allowance announced in the Summer Budget.

These measures are among those that address the key regulatory problems and perverse incentives that have been preventing the flow of finance to people and businesses who need it and improved returns to savers and investors. The first regulatory initiative was to regulate P2P lending, announced in 2013; while the first step in addressing incentives was to include P2P loans in ISAs - first announced in 2014.

In introducing the latest incentive measures the government says it remains "determined to increase competition in the financial sector, where new firms such as P2P platforms can thrive alongside the established players and compete to offer new and improved services to customers. This new relief will create a level playing field for the taxation of income from P2P lending when compared to the taxation of traditional forms of retail investment available from those established players."

The government's commitment is critical, given that the financial system is now less diverse than before the financial crisis blew up in 2008. Few bank reforms have actually taken effect - and some are being watered down. Recent fines and scandals also reveal little change in mainstream financial services culture from that described in the report of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards and most recently in the damning report into the failure of HBOS.

From 6 April 2016, individuals investing in certain P2P loans will be able to set-off the losses they incur from loans in default against income they receive from other P2P loans, when calculating their savings income for tax purposes. 

In addition, under the Personal Savings Allowance announced in the Summer Budget 2015, the first £1,000 of savings income will be exempt from tax for basic rate taxpayers and the first £500 for higher rate taxpayers. An individual’s PSA will apply to interest they receive from P2P lending after any relief for bad debts. 

Should The CBI Chief Resign?

Really?

Despite purporting to represent 240,000 businesses of all sizes, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has long been an apologist for the UK's banks (who account for a substantial proportion of its funding). But in one hilariously poorly judged article in the Times, its director-general has finally eroded all credibility by calling for both a time-bar on PPI compensation claims and protection for UK banks against any successful court proceedings arising from their Libor fixing activities. 

Now you might think it particularly poor judgement to choose the current bank-driven economic scenario as a golden opportunity to demand yet more public assistance for the authors of our doom.  

And you might well believe it to be spectacularly naive, irresponsible and even downright absurd to demand protection for the beneficiaries of what is now the largest case of financial mis-selling in British history, at the expense of victims, from the very regulator who is bound to protect them.

But surely then you'd have to consider it to be successfully suicidal to invoke retrospective sovereign immunity for fixing a global interest rate benchmark while domestic criminal investigations are in progress, not to mention civil suits of the kind one or more of your own members might bring.

I can't imagine that even the banks would have the barefaced cheek to ask for any of this privately, let alone in an article in the Times. Still, you never can tell with Britain's institutions.

Finally, however, let's not ignore the CBI chief's bold and cunning suggestion that the banks' £12bn in provisions for PPI compensation might somehow represent spare funds that could, or would otherwise be lent to people and businesses (in other words, not to the low income earners who would have received it in compensation). 

Conflating the accounting for civil penalties with the privilege bestowed on banks by the state to create credit is not just silly in its own right. It also invites attention to the fact emphasised by Richard Werner, that only 10% of the credit created by UK banks in the exercise of that great public privilege is actually directed toward the people and businesses who need it to grow the economy, while the other 90% goes to fuel speculative deals in non-GDP financial assets. So, whatever you might think of opportunistic, ambulance-chasing PPI claims management firms, you might find it utterly contemptuous for anyone to suggest that consumers should forego compensation for being sold phoney insurance when it would barely amount to a rounding-error on such rampant, unchecked public exploitation. 

But maybe this is what the CBI means by "asking for immediate action to smooth the transition to a "new normal" in banking lending [sic]."

Yes, Mr Crudland, I reckon you should get your coat.