Lightyear rolls out Investment Account for small businesses in UK

By Gloria Methri

Investment platform Lightyear has announced the launch of small business investment accounts for freelancers and sole directors in the UK. The launch comes alongside a new partnership with BlackRock to bring access to Money Market Funds for UK businesses without the high fees or minimum investments.

The business accounts help freelancers and sole director companies make the most of their company funds, ensuring that excess corporate cash isn’t consumed by inflation while sitting in bank accounts.

For UK businesses, Money Market Funds are traditionally hard to access, with options in the market reserved for large corporates who can buy in with a £1 million minimum investment.

Lightyear’s partnership with BlackRock, one of the largest investment companies, will give business and retail investors access to MMFs without the minimum investment criteria. In addition to giving 4.5% interest on uninvested GBP, the platform now has a strong product for UK investors to make the most of global high-interest rates with both cash and investments. BlackRock’s GBP money market fund currently returns 5.14% p.a (gross yield, subject to daily fluctuations and gross fees).

Martin Sokk, Co-founder, and CEO at Lightyear said, “I am particularly excited about today’s launch of our business investment accounts and MMFs, as we are helping businesses benefit from the increasing interest rates – something which they just can’t do with banks. We are first focusing on the largest, but most underserved part of the market – sole owner businesses – then we will open this out to multi-user and larger businesses in the next few months.”

Taavet Hinrikus, Co-Founder of Wise and startup investor added, “With today’s high-interest rate climate, Lightyear’s launch of both business investment accounts and MMFs is a timely step towards helping entrepreneurs put their cash to work. Their new business accounts enable freelancers to earn interest and invest their otherwise stagnant cash, and their BlackRock MMFs partnership introduces these entrepreneurs to a whole new area of investing, previously reserved for larger corporates.”