We have had a lot of requests for updates on the big three P2P lending sites, namely Zopa, Funding Circle and RateSetter. There’s an awful lot of important things to say about each of them, so here goes: Zopa Core earns a 4thWay PLUS Rating…
One of my colleagues wrote a 4,000-word report on RateSetter, explaining some recent troubles it has had as well as his opinion on whether individual lenders should sell RateSetter loans now. It’s called Fact Check: RateSetter Hit By £80m Of Struggling Loans. I know that…
The safest type of lending is lending to borrowers who own investment properties. This means lending to landlords who own and rent out any of the following: Residential properties (houses and flats). Shops. Offices. Factories. Car parks. Workshops. Other land or properties. What makes investment-property lending…
It’s exciting for me to see changes in 4thWay’s comparison tables, but how are the different P2P lending products in those tables ranked from top to bottom? And how has this enabled new entrant Growth Street to go straight to the top of the table?…
The fact of the matter is that Funding Circle is absolutely the stand-out leader in unsecured business lending: It has a very long and large history to assess its record: £2 billion in loans since 2010. No-one else comes close. Its performance has been highly admirable…
Last year, RateSetter announced changes to its bad-debt provision fund that will now take place in March. The old way RateSetter’s provision fund worked Individual lenders lend to specific borrowers (although you don’t get to choose your borrowers). RateSetter’s bad-debt provision fund covers losses that…
It can be a little exasperating to see individual lenders using the comments section under my articles on 4thWay, or in their emails to me. The main cause of the exasperation is when they write something like this: “I’ve earned good money with that P2P lending…
I wrote this piece to give those of you new to Wellesley a little background to go with the recent sell alert from my colleague, Neil Faulkner, which you can read here. What Wellesley does Wellesley does development and bridging loans. It has four loans…
Finally, 4thWay has enough information to list in our comparison tables, for the first time and not for the lack of trying, one of those rare of P2P lending things: an IFISA product. These offer completely tax-free P2P lending. Like Willy Wonka’s golden ticket, there are only…
The providers of P2P lending in the Evolution SIPP, Greyfriars, announced in late 2016 that from 1 January 2017 it will open no new P2P lending accounts and no new P2P lending can take place through its SIPP. Greyfriars stated that the reason for this…
The 4thWay Alerts Service lets our email subscribers know when a 4thWay writer has seen any major changes at a P2P lending website that he/she would want to be informed about personally – speaking as lenders themselves. I have seen several changes at Wellesley & Co.* since I…
Here are the latest peer-to-peer lending customer ratings of the main providers. You can’t take the following as absolute proof of overall customer satisfaction, because companies can encourage customers who they know to be happy to rate them online. There will also be many borrowers…
Full authorisation from the financial regulator paves the way for Lending Works’ IFISA – a tax-free P2P lending account – in just a few weeks. It’ll be the first truly established P2P lending provider to get authorised and to get its IFISA released. Lending Works…
How did I get here? It’s a question that many investors – in any investment – might be asking quicker than you think. Let me get to the point in a laborious and roundabout route. I’ve always been a fan of stock-market tracking funds: index…
Here is the RateSetter lending strategy. RateSetter is one of the simplest and easiest P2P lending offerings available. Lend using the market rate Most of us using RateSetter lend and re-lend our loan repayments automatically using the “market rate”, which is the average rate achieved the previous day. Currently…
This article is about how much you should split between savings accounts/cash ISAs and peer-to-peer lending, and also shares if you want more diversification further up the risk scale. I also discuss the money you might put into buying your own home. Those are what…
Last updated on 6 September 2015. There’s not much point lending your money if you can get similar rates with savings accounts and cash ISAs! That’s why it makes sense to compare the P2P lending interest rates to the very best savings accounts and cash ISAs (tax-free…
My colleague Neil wrote about how we need to defend ourselves from financial disasters in 2 Rules To Lend Easily And Be Safe From Recessions. Today I want to look at another big item that we need to protect ourselves from: greedy P2P lending websites….
Our research shows that if you: Stick to low risk lending Spread your money across several P2P lending websites and lots of loans Be willing and able to lend and re-lend for five years, and Don’t lend when interest rates sink too low Then your…
Peer-to-peer lending is not quite like any other investment. It’s really like being your own personal bank. But you don’t do all the hard work! No. Because you own the bank. So others do most of the work for you. Setting up your bank As…
