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Across Europe, crowdfunding is quickly moving from a fringe funding instrument to becoming a mainstream finance channel, connecting “crowds” to fund businesses, projects and individuals. In its recently published Report on Crowdfunding in the EU Capital Markets Union, the

European Commission details the importance of crowdfunding as “an important source of non-bank financing in support of job creation, economic growth and competitiveness”(European Commission 2016). While there remains no harmonised regulatory framework applicable to crowdfunding across Europe, individual member states have adopted national regulatory approaches to supervise crowdfunding activities–“tailoring their regulatory frameworks to the characteristics and needs of local markets and investors, which results in differences on how the rules are designed and implemented”(European Commission 2016, 4-5). This article will focus on the regulatory regime in the United Kingdom that regulates and supervises online alternative finance activities that fall under the crowdfunding umbrella.