Taking a hard, cold look at that jumble of ideas, desires and fears we have in our own noggins should not be an afterthought, and reading about investor psychology not just something to do one idle evening in an armchair after we’ve already got our…
A long question from 4thWay reader Pete Harper about Funding Circle. Pete Harper, 4thWay user: How do you all feel about Funding Circle and their bad debts these days? I decided about 6 months ago to pull out of FC because of what seemed…
Development loans offer attractive interest rates of 8% or more, secured on land and property, so they are appealing to lenders. Most property P2P lending websites focus on development loans more than other kinds of property loans. (See sidebox, right, to find out what development…
Prime personal loans P2P lending site Lending Works* is one of a smaller number of P2P lending sites that uses insurance to protect lenders from specific situations. What the insurance does for lenders Lending Works’ insurance could pay out if and when a borrower is unable…
Not enough time to read this 4,000 word report? See the simple, plain English summary here. In this report: The Guardian says: RateSetter was hit by £80m of problem loans. Is that true? Significant mistakes admitted by RateSetter. The risks and rewards at RateSetter have…
There are very few P2P lending sites that have given me the feeling of 100% honesty and openness that we at 4thWay also aim for, but I certainly feel that from CapitalStackers. Jumping through hoops For a P2P lending site to get listed on 4thWay,…
In a recent article, one of his first for 4thWay, freelance investment journalist Cliff D’Arcy suggested the maximum amount that any of us should lend through P2P is 5% or at most 10% of our wealth. Susan, a 4thWay reader, told me on the phone…
Scott is a 4thWay reader to whom I am grateful since he takes the trouble to send us much needed feedback. (Hint hint. You can send your praise, requests and constructive criticism to allofus@4thway.co.uk. Thanks!) Scott just asked me if, in the light of new…
It’s very early days still for LendingCrowd, but so far it’s a tale of two halves: LendingCrowd’s lower-risk loans are easily on track for the top 5/5 4thWay PLUS Rating. But its higher-risk loans do not currently appear to pay lenders enough interest to cover…
Recently I was a bit confused about the difference between Assetz Capital’s various products, in particular when you want to get early access or get your money lent quickly. After asking Assetz Capital for clarity, I just want to quickly share this with you in…
Question from anonymous 4thWay reader “I have been investing in P2Ps for a number of years now. These include RateSetter, Zopa, Lending Works* and Landbay*. My experience across all four has, in general, been good. “Last November I invested £8,500 with Funding Circle for the…
Crowd2Fund does business loans and it is available in an IFISA (a tax-free P2P lending account) paying 8.5% or more before bad debts. I’m going to show you one way to select individual business loans to lend in at Crowd2Fund for yourself, rather than relying…
I fielded a call from a lender who wondered, only very mildly worried, about Funding Circle’s changes to its property loans, which it announced a short time ago. There are two changes. Some property loans to get a worse grade Funding Circle is going to…
Neil Faulkner says that with low interest rates for lenders, less impressive loan book performance than similar competitors, increased risks from borrowing to lend and not enough of the right kinds of unambiguous information and data, he sets out his opinion that, if he was lending…
May people say that P2P lending websites hve lost their way; they’re not P2P any more. And when I say “many people say”, unlike Donald Trump, I don’t mean me. I mean a lot of financial journalists and individual lenders are saying it. I’ve heard them…
When you look deep into the detail of Funding Circle’s* loans, you get some interesting patterns. Today, I compared the two biggest types of loans: “expansion/growth capital” versus “working capital” loans to see how they compare on both bad debts and interest rates. Is one riskier…
Having lived in Germany for seven years, I’d like to make a small comparison before getting to the point. While Germans are all individuals like the rest of us, their culture has developed a few very different ways of looking at things. As far as I’m concerned,…
If you lend to Funding Circle* A+ business borrowers you can currently earn more than at RateSetter, Lending Works* and Zopa, but with a better recent record of repayment than RateSetter and Zopa. Yet Funding Circle doesn’t have a bad-debt provision fund and the others…
Eddyyy intends to start up as a peer-to-peer lending company offering personal loans. We have little information about it and so we don’t know if it will get off the ground, so I shan’t be reviewing it today. But what we do know is its…
See the hidden costs in peer-to-peer lending on four peer-to-peer lending websites covering five different types of loans. Also read how the overall P2P lending costs compare to other investments. While many peer-to-peer lending websites (aka marketplace lenders) claim to have no lending fee, and others…
