HMRC has confirmed that financial advisers will after all be permitted to use “aggregator platforms” to diversify loans within the Innovative Finance ISA (IFISA).

Peer-to-peer (P2P) lenders within the UK’s alternative finance space have been warning that the original rules, which only permitted loans to the new ISA to be facilitated via a single lending platform, would leave investors’ money exceptionally exposed to a single investment strategy.

The new revision will mean that loans from different P2P lenders can now be pooled into a single IFISA, as is already the case in stocks and shares ISAs.

Speaking to the finance industry news source FTAdviser, an HMRC spokesperson said: “The Innovative Finance ISA rules will provide for the aggregator model, to the extent that the ISA manager is regulated by the FCA, and the platform in question has full FCA permissions.”

In a technical consultation on the forthcoming IFISA between 8th December 2015 and 1st February this year, HMRC received eight responses from P2P lenders, industry representatives and other businesses. In response, HMRC amended its draft legislation to permit loan repayments collected by a lending platform and then passed to an ISA manager to be eligible for inclusion in the new ISA.

Goji Managing Director Jake Wombwell-Povey welcomed the development, stating: “IFAs will now be able to build a balanced IFISA portfolio across a range of platforms, as opposed to being limited to invest in a single platform which presented investment risk and limited diversification.”

He also praised the Chancellor’s Budget decision to raise the ISA limit to £20,000 next year, describing it as a “massive boost” to the industry.