Guides, Reviews & Tips

Why do peer-to-peer lending? It offers much greater returns than savings with lower risk than the stock market even when you commit your money for less time.

4thWay provides candid information about all the risks and benefits, so that you can decide for yourself whether it's right for you.

Below we show you five great ways to learn about peer-to-peer lending and P2P IFISAs, so you can earn more money, more safely!

The sections on this page

Read our 10 Core P2P Lending Guide pages

What is P2P Lending? Or see an image explaining the same in How Peer-to-Peer Lending Works.
Is Peer-to-Peer Lending Safe?
4thWay's 10 P2P Investing Principles.
The 13 Key Peer-To-Peer Lending Risks. (And two more risks in IFISAs: IFISAs: What Are The Risks?)
4-Step Strategy to Safe Peer-to-Peer Lending.
10 Ways To Get Your P2P Lending Money Back!
Peer-to-Peer Lending Vs Other Investments.
How Is Peer-to-Peer Lending Taxed?
The IFISA (P2P ISA) Guide.
How One Lender Is Losing Money – A Lesson In P2P Lending Diversification.

Other popular mini-guides include Can Your Business Lend Through P2P? and How Much to Invest in Peer-to-Peer Lending.

If you get stuck for understanding any jargon, we offer you our Peer-to-Peer Lending And IFISA Glossary.

Every single word on this website is 100% original research and opinion from 4thWay, the first P2P ratings agency in the world. We are regularly the victims of plagiarism from bloggers or money websites. These copycats sometimes even copy incorrectly, leading to dangerously incorrect information. So please support us by reading our content! Sign up to our newsletter.

Compare lending products and IFISAs

Compare all P2P lending products, including IFISAs or just compare IFISAs.

Visit our most popular pages at the moment

See P2P lending reviews from 4thWay's specialists

There is probably no better way anywhere on the Web to quickly learn about each individual P2P lending opportunity than by reading reviews from our specialists.

Read our very popular and educational reviews for each P2P lending site by going to the compare page and then clicking on the reviews that interest you, so that you can see other key information side-by-side, such as their 4thWay PLUS Ratings.

Or you can click on the links here if you just want to read individual reviews in peace:

Read our latest research and tips

Compare IFISAs

It's a new ISA season and you probably know it's even easier to invest in IFISAs now, since the government made the rules easier from 6th April.

Visit our P2P lending IFISA comparison tables where you'll see their IFISA ratings and reviews.

Oh, did we tell you that 4thWay has a 100% record in both positive and negative investment recommendations and ratings since we started in 2014? Now you know.

So check out the IFISAs and their 6.5% to 10% returns.

HNW Lending Reassessment

There is definitely no P2P lending provider quite like HNW Lending. If you're looking for more diversification and you have deep pockets, look no further.

Our leading specialist has conducted a huge amount of new research on this provider and its lending accounts, and reassessed its 4thWay PLUS Rating using our diabolically tough stress tests.

Read the updated HNW Lending Review.

Proplend Review: Updates

The now profitable Proplend has paid out £23 million in interest with just £40,000 in losses. And none of its outstanding rental-property loans are bad debts.

Read 4thWay's thorough reassessment of this remarkable investment opportunity.

Development Lending: “Last Six Months Have Been The Worst, Including The Pandemic”

Individual lenders, spoiled by years of property development loans (mostly) repaying more or less on time, will have seen a steady, swift increase in late and problematic loans over the past year or so.

What is going on? Is it something to worry about? What if on top of that there's a crash and recession to contend with?

Read about the trajectory of P2P development lending.

I Can't Believe I Forgot To Share This With You!

Matt Howard wrote an update on the 1st January about how P2P Lending Beats The Stock Market, Yet Again, In 2023.

And I forgot to share it with you! It's now the 25th March, for goodness' sake!

Better late than never, read about the unbroken 19-year record of positive returns for P2P lending and how often it has outperformed shares.

Lendwise Review Updated-Not-Updated

Just letting you know, we've re-conducted our Lendwise 4thWay PLUS Rating assessment and conducted some fresh research, but this has not impacted our research or 4thWay's specialists' opinions.

Here is a link to the Lendwise Review, but, if you read it in November when we updated it last, you'll not really see anything new this time.

Which P2P Lending Companies Boost Lender Returns With Default Interest?

When borrowers fall late, some providers pay lenders additional penalty fees and/or interest.

This can boost your annual returns on some loans by 3-4 percentage points!

Somo Review Updated: Now Paying Over 10% To Lenders

After a complete reassessment, the biggest changes to Somo are tougher requirements before you're allowed to invest, e.g. in terms of how wealthy you need to be (boo!) and much higher lending interest rates after fees – back up in the double digits again (yay!). Read about it here.

Loanpad Review Updated

Some Loanpad accounts had become less competitive when savings rates rocketed last year, but now it's paying a good premium again.

We've completed another full reassessment of its lenders' prospects in a severe recession or property crash and found it to still be able to withstand just about everything but a nuclear disaster! Take a look.

The Best IFISAs This 2024/25 Season

Over the past seven weeks we've reassessed a large number of providers, many of which offer the best IFISAs available.

Your lending portfolio will earn stable, highly attractive returns if you spread your money across many loans in half-a-dozen lending accounts from of these providers.

That's even during a poor economy or property market. Read about the best IFISAs.

Risks In P2P Lending: Cybercrime – Unlucky Number 13

We've added another risk to our Key Peer-To-Peer Lending Risks page, taking the total now to 13.

Cybercrime might not happen often in P2P, but, were it to happen, the costs could be substantial.

Assetz Exchange Updates

After a full reassessment, we've updated our Assetz Exchange Review.

Assetz Exchange – which is strategically very distanced from its namesake, Assetz Capital – is rather like being a landlord in many key ways.

You can make a profit on sale of properties and you earn interest linked to the rising rents.

Yet your protections are more in line with money lending.

It's complex though, so take a very deep breath before plunging into this very long review.

Lending Through Multiple IFISAs Is Getting Much Easier

We just updated the IFISA Guide – again – this time based on how they will work in the coming tax year, which starts on 6th April 2024.

We probably should have done this two months ago, as we updated the guide then as well. Sorry about that.

It's going to be much easier to lend across more IFISAs though, so check it out, and find out how the new, easier rules will work.

Invest & Fund Review – Updated

Invest & Fund offers just about the best risk-reward balance available for these particular kinds of property loans.

Almost no loans suffering even tiny issues since 2015 (while paying double lending interest if they ever were to suffer problems anyway).

Read what about the risks, rates and how Invest & Fund's record is better than its peers.

UK Peer-to-Peer Lending For Overseas Residents

We've updated this guide for lenders not based in the UK who want to lend through UK-based P2P lending websites and similar online lending platforms.

Mostly, this means adding to it so that it is now a complete list of providers that allow overseas lenders.

The Peer-To-Peer IFISA Guide

If you need to know absolutely anything at all about how IFISAs work, what the benefits and costs are, see a list of all providers that offer P2P IFISA, and more, it's all here in the most comprehensive IFISA guide from the horses' mouth, based on research involving accountants and the taxman himself.

Other Review Updates

We've also made some updates to the Downing Crowd Review.

How The Most Successful Individual Lenders Grow Their P2P Wealth

Quite a few lenders who read 4thWay research are also property developers, landlords, they run their families' wealth funds, or they have worked in industries similar to P2P lending.

These lenders have recently shared some of the secrets of their success, by explaining how they assess P2P lending providers and individual loans, and otherwise get highly satisfactory results.

Read what these skilled lenders do to contain risks and get great lending results.

AxiaFunder Review – Substantial Updates For You

AxiaFunder has been offering investments similar to loans that are supposed to provide you with returns above 20%. It's now been going since 2019 and its newer offerings have been going since May 2022.

We had to wait a while to establish how the maturing investments have performed through much of this year. But now you'll find substantial updates based on the latest results.

In particular see the section Getting your rewards (which now explains how tranches are paid out to you when smaller fund raises are batched together) as well as How good are AxiaFunder's returns, bad debts and margin of safety?

Read the updated AxiaFunder Review.

Another Updated Review – Crowd2Fund

We've updated another review, namely the Crowd2Fund Review.

This review has less meat to it than many of our other reviews, as the providers don't give 4thWay full access to people, data or documentation, and don't routinely answer our questions.

Nevertheless, updates include politics, wind-down plans, profitability, key people and what we've got on lending results and bad debts.

(Note that part of these updates were done in August with the other part completed last week, but this is the first time we're bringing it all to your attention.)

The 3 P2P Lending Providers With The Best Financial Health

All else being equal, you have to feel more comfortable when the P2P lending providers you use are also pulling in strong and stable profits.

Read about the three providers with the best financial results.

Lendwise And Blend Reviews Both Updated

After a full reassessment of Lendwise's loans, a 4thWay specialist has updated the Lendwise Review, mostly impacting the section How good are Lendwise's interest rates, bad debts and margin of safety?

We've also taken another look at Blend, which we don't often do as we lack information and data. Even so, the whole Blend Review has been brought significantly up-to-date.

More research from 4thWay

Add to your knowledge by signing up to our newsletter, or by looking through our candid opinions (our main category of research) and P2P lending news. Every piece of research is with the sole purpose of helping you to lend better, making more money, more safely.

If you are interested in particular areas, you can visit specific sub-categories of our research: P2P property lending, P2P lending strategy, P2P and macroeconomics, and Alternative P2P Investing. You'll find it all in our articles and research section.

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