The FCA recently suspended a regulated financial business due to weak controls against money laundering, leaving up to one million account holders unable to access their money. The suspended company, called ePayments Systems Limited, has nothing to do with the peer-to-peer lending industry. But it…
Neil Faulkner, 4thWay’s co-founder and Head of Research, has picked his top eight IFISA picks, based on his assessment of the risks and rewards. They include: Five selections that are easy to use and are good for both entry-level and expert-level investors. Five selections that…
Property peer-to-peer lending sites that use loan brokers or regional managers to attract borrowers always require an extra little bit of attention from 4thWay. Brokers don’t just do the initial assessment of a loan. They are also partly salespeople, selling the loans to banks and…
In May, the most interesting and well-written comment about peer-to-peer lending or IFISAs that is posted on 4thWay’s discussion boards, or the most interesting emailed contribution we receive, will win £100 if we choose to publish it. We may even pay out for more than…
4thWay user David Bradshaw had this question for us about Growth Street: “Firstly, I’d just like to compliment you on your excellent website as it’s been a helpful resource for me as I’m sure many others before me, on starting with P2P investments. I now…
LendingCrowd’s Growth and Income peer-to-peer lending accounts, including the IFISA versions, have now earned “Excellent” 4thWay PLUS Ratings. Previously, just LendingCrowd’s Self Select lending account and IFISA had earned a rating. Why have these accounts been upgraded so soon? The two LendingCrowd* accounts have been…
We’ve provided you with a lot of information on peer-to-peer lending sites in our very detailed comparison service since 2014. And that includes IFISAs since the first one was released. However, we’ve now created a separate IFISA comparison service to make it easier, and added…
Proplend Proplend* has given an update on its P2P mortgages to commercial and residential property owners that are leasing out their properties. One loan was repaid about a month late. Lenders earned an extra 20% interest in the month they were waiting for their money…
Thank you for all the fantastic feedback we have received from all our users, industry insiders, as well as experts in our fields who we’ve respected for a very long time. It really helps all the writers, specialists and the whole team at 4thWay to…
Some 4thWay users asked us about three P2P lending sites missing from the 4thWay comparison tables, and about a fourth P2P lending site that has been proving frustrating. Here are their questions and our answers. S Smith, 4thWay user: I think your website is very…
In this article today, I’m looking at P2P lending company money: which P2P lending sites put a lot of their business cash on the line? This is to follow up on the recent 4thWay article about P2P lending site founders who lend their own money…
What we learned about RateSetter’s experiments Rhydian Lewis, RateSetter’s* CEO, got the chance to present his business recently. I’ve set the above video to start from the point where I think it might be particularly interesting to individual lenders as regards to RateSetter’s own business,…
Here’s a picture to show you what the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority does and what it doesn’t do to make P2P lending safer. The FCA has effectively blocked around 300 applications from businesses wanting to start a P2P lending site and I have seen its…
There are all sorts of reasons why a P2P lending website may no longer be able to pay its bills. It might run out of start-up funding before it has started to earn enough money. It might succumb to better, more nimble competition. It might itself…
This week I received a newsletter from a popular money-saving tips website that said: “Peer-to-peer lending isn’t the only option for savers keen to earn more – there’s also investing to consider.” It was just yet another time that I’ve heard P2P being described as…
We’re not a P2P “industry news” site, but we do like to report news if it directly helps individual lenders to make better lending decisions, which is our entire raison d’être. A lot of news like this has occurred over the past six weeks or…
Some P2P lending sites have to make changes to satisfy the financial regulator, which could mean you sometimes have to wait weeks before all your money is lent. The Financial Conduct Authority has frowned upon pre-funded loans in some cases. “Pre-funded” means that either the…
Bad debt: that’s when a loan goes past just being “late” into what’s called “default” or “non-performing”, and even beyond – when not all that debt can be recovered and it is “written off”, never to be seen by lenders again. Bad debts are a fact…
Peer-to-peer lending sites put loads of time into offering great service to borrowers, but what about service for lenders? Some provide emails that are automatically tailored to what you want or they answer your brief written questions online. But, as far as I know, just…
The operators dealing with P2P lending in the Evolution SIPP, which is possibly the best pension for P2P lending, have just announced that they will not allow new P2P lending. In addition, other pension providers offering P2P lending might reduce or remove their services for non-advised…
