I don’t often write about the ethical, ecological, responsible, “doing good” or social aspects of lending. Hardly anyone clicks on headlines like that. Yet now that I’ve tricked you into this one with my vague title, would you give me a few minutes, as: We…
HNW Lending’s Manual Property & Asset Lending Account, averaging LTV after directors taking first loss, received an Exceptional 3/3 4thWay PLUS Rating. This manual lending account is paying around interest and the average lent is just of the valuation of the borrowers’ properties. Its auto-lend account…
This review is temporarily down Normally, when 4thWay’s specialists reassess peer-to-peer lending providers and other online direct lending providers on behalf of individual lenders, the new assessment is put up on the 4thWay website with no downtime in between. However, perhaps once per year on…
LEND.ch is a Swiss peer-to-peer lending provider offering lending in Swiss francs (CHF). It hasn’t opened up to 4thWay’s specialists with data and access to its key people and therefore we haven’t conducted our usual week’s long assessment of it. So this is kind of…
Update: the first answer was corrected on 10th June after a stupid error by me. My apologies. On the positive side, on the 11th June HMRC explicitly confirmed to 4thWay that our second answer is correct. We have two questions on flexible ISAs and one…
We had a query from a 4thWay user about tax rules on lender fees recently, so I thought we could answer that for everyone. The reader was asking about whether lender fees are tax deductible, what that even means, which P2P lending companies currently charge…
History has shown so far that when P2P lending sites, close, few of them end up paying reduced returns to lenders as a result of closing down and winding down loans until they’re repaid. (Although, as usual, you can suffer losses from bad debts after…
Occasionally lenders reach out to 4thWay and describe what they are up to, how they’re doing and what their experiences have been when lending. I really appreciate the contact from you! Recently I had an email that inspired me to write this page today. I’m…
The people normally using 4thWay’s research are all very lucky. I mean, I presume you have money to spare if you’re lending it. There are an awful lot of people who can’t say the same. Yet I think it’s worth looking at the other side…
Whenever you invest (and money lending is a form of investment), you’re taking a risk that you’ll lose money. Not just lose to inflation – which is a loss that is practically guaranteed to happen in savings accounts. But I mean an actual loss in…
You have dozens of choices when it comes to peer-to-peer property lending. As far as we know, we’re listing every single one of your choices on this page that we at 4thWay consider to be P2P lending. The majority of P2P property lending websites offer…
Housemartin’s P2P Lending Account And IFISA And Classic Account has earned an Exceptional 3/3 4thWay PLUS Rating. These loans have been paying lenders around of the loan amount in interest, after bad debts. Visit Housemartin* or keep reading the Housemartin Review.
The number and type of P2P lending companies operating from the UK changes regularly. We keep this page updated every quarter. On this page, you’ll find: Full alphabetical list of the peer-to-peer lending companies in the UK. Which includes: – What types of lending they…
However, I’m not going to remind you what the latest property-price forecasts from the UK’s best-known economists are for 2025 or the next 12 months. If you want to know, you’ll have to look them up yourselves. Here’s why… What happened in 2024? To start…
My team and I have been assessing P2P lending accounts since 2014 and we continue to have a 100% record. (We won’t always get all the most important calls right – that’s impossible in investing – but we expect that we almost always will.) My…
This content today is extremely different to normal, but I need to get it out, as it’s pressing on my mind. Unusually, this page is not about a cold assessment of an investment provider or lending tips. Instead, it’s all about me. I have to…
The key risks in IFISAs are: Psychological risk: your own greed and fear. Concentration risk: you don’t spread your money across lots of loans and P2P lending sites. Credit risk: borrowers don’t repay you. Platform risk: the P2P lending site (the “platform”) goes bust and…
Lendwise’s lending accounts are unrated. These loans are expected to pay lenders around after bad debts. Visit Lendwise or keep reading the Lendwise Review.
Loanpad’s Premium Account/Premium IFISA received an Exceptional 3/3 4thWay PLUS Rating. This account has been paying interest after zero bad debts. Visit Loanpad* or keep reading the Loanpad Review.
Proplend’s Tranche A, 0-50% LTV Lending Against Property Mostly Receiving Rent received an Exceptional 3/3 4thWay PLUS Rating. These loans have been paying interest after bad debts. Visit Proplend* or keep reading the Proplend Review.
Proplend* does secured property lending in the UK. The loans are to landlords of residential properties or commercial properties such as shops, business parks and hotels. These loans are typically for 36 months and they are always earning rent.
It’s been paying 8.41% after bad debts, across all its loan types and grades (tranches A to C).
Historically, Proplend also arranged some short-term property (bridging) lending and had a perfect record with them. But, since it virtually never approves them any more, I shall not include them in this review.
Proplend also completed some VAT loans with 100% success, but has not done any more for some time, so they’re not covered here.
Proplend first approved a loan in 2014 and has completed £245 million in lending.
Proplend’s biggest strength is in the security that borrowers offer lenders.
In most of its loans, called tranche A, borrowers are very stringently restricted in how much they can borrow compared to the property valuation. 50% is the maximum, leaving a huge amount of room for problems if a borrower can’t repay and the property needs to be forcibly sold to recover your lent money.
No other P2P lending provider sets a better maximum limit. Indeed, as of March 2025, there are now no other providers that match this limit, making Proplend truly unique.
More than that, borrowers are usually already earning rent on their properties that more than covers the monthly loan payments. Few P2P lending providers offer this kind of lending.
Lenders who want to take more risk to potentially earn higher interest rates can agree in advance to lend over 50% and be second or third in the queue when it comes to recovering their money if a loan turns bad.
Proplend* has had a good record of enabling lenders to exit their loans early – before a borrower repays. While Proplend won’t always manage to help you exit early, its typical exit times have compared favourably with many other P2P lending and IFISA providers.
Pictures speak louder than words:
4thWay’s Proplend review infographic: click to expand to see How does Proplend work?
Lenders in Proplend’s “tranche A” loans are protected by real-estate security with a property valuation that’s at least twice the size of the loan. This is incredibly good risk coverage for lenders. If a loan turns bad, any forced sale of the property would have to give lenders back less than half the property price, after costs, before you lost any of your initial loan.
Lenders lending in tranches B and C are choosing to take riskier slices of loans, with a greater risk of losses in the event a loan turns bad. Lenders can blend all tranches for a different risk-reward balance.
Proplend* doesn’t just reject loan applications based on quality, but also to ensure diverse kinds of loans for lenders. Having borrowers with more different kinds of properties can reduce risk.
Its practice of rejecting borrowers in the name of diversification is possibly overkill – at least in this particular economic situation.
Yes, offices are still chronically under-used since the pandemic. And rising interest rates aren’t helping landlords, when the occupants of the offices decide not to renew their leases. But Proplend continues to get full repayment of all loans and interest, even on loans where borrowers have a few issues.
Even so, good money lending is about maintaining your high standards, so I take comfort from Proplend lenders’ exposure to offices, at under 10% of outstanding loans. Combined with Proplend’s tight lending caps against the value of each property, the downside risk to lenders is exceptionally well contained.
Most loans – of all tranches – are secured against properties that are earning rent.
The combination of rent and real-property security substantially lowers the risks, as it reduces the chances of loans going bad and increases the chances of recovering bad debt.
Regarding Proplend’s tranche A loans, the risks while lending half the property valuation and earning rent is lower than any other type of P2P property lending currently available in the UK and, indeed, any other type of non-property lending too.
It’s rare that Proplend accepts a loan where the borrower is receiving rent equal to less than one-and-a-quarter times the monthly loan payments to Proplend lenders.
Like all property lenders, Proplend* allows some lenders to re-borrow when a loan comes to the end of its term. To do this, borrowers repay the debt to existing lenders by borrowing again through Proplend. This is called an “internal refinance”.
Refinances are not over-abundant. That would be a possible sign that problem debts were being deliberately kicked down the road. Alternatively, it would be a sign that Proplend’s borrowers have no solid long-term plan.
We now have sufficient history for Proplend to find that loans that are internally refinanced are probably more likely to turn bad, at perhaps 1.5 times the rate of other loans, which is a little lower than our expectations.
Proplend is very quick to label a loan as a bad debt. Since these loans are usually on properties that earn income, it’s generally easy for borrowers to make good. Largely for these two reasons, Proplend loans have been easy to recover simply by communicating with the borrower. They rarely require properties to be forcibly resold.
Secondly, recoveries are still exceptionally high when recovering the outstanding money, and interest is paid for the delays.
That includes increased penalty interest and fees, paid to lenders, which has actually boosted overall returns above the initial expected rates. This is a relative rarity, as P2P providers themselves typically pocket the increased interest, paying lenders just the standard interest while delayed loans remain unpaid.
That’s why all bad debts on internally refinanced loans have been recovered so far, with lenders paid the interest due and with no remaining loans in the recovery phase.
Previously, I have written: “Lenders might resist the temptation to lend in a very high number of refinances, particularly in tranches B and C.” Now, as even more time passes and we see more results, I hold that opinion with a lot less strength.
Proplend* has remained picky about the loans it approves, maintaining high standards. It approves around 10% of loan applications.
Its processes for reviewing borrowers, their properties and their tenants are as we would expect for these kinds of loans.
This peer-to-peer lending company has proven that its processes to shut out fraud are good. Fraud is where property lending has caused serious trouble at less professional lending companies.
It uses very simple, but strict, base criteria to ensure that the loans it offers lenders are likely to repay in full and with interest.
Most critically, Proplend has demonstrated speed and effectiveness in its processes when reacting quickly to loans that fall late. These loans have typically been fully repaid within just three months.
Proplend’s results on its loans against properties receiving rent beat expectations. Around 100 of these loans have repaid and just over 70 are still active and in good standing. There is currently just one outstanding bad debt and two loans that are slightly late.
On all its loans of all types, Proplend lenders suffered just one small loss in nearly 10 years, in a lower tranche.
All lenders who lent across a basket of loans have made extremely satisfactory returns, even if they were also lending in that one bad tranche.
Combined with generous interest rates for lenders, I am highly confident that the risks are very well contained.
Proplend’s tranche A loans really hit a sweet spot on the risk-reward scale. But its tranche B and C loans are comfortably in a good interest-rate range too when adjusting for risk, at about 8% to 11%.
Proplend* continues to show a very steady and very large margin of safety against losses.
We regularly look at the performance of all its loans, using international banking-style stress tests.
Our conservative version of these tests calculates the estimated results during a severe recession and property crash, similar to 2008. Our tests strongly indicate that Proplend lenders who take the time to spread their money across as different loans have a large margin of safety, even in terrible economic conditions.
That’s why Proplend has earned the top 4thWay PLUS Rating of 3/3 for tranche A. The same goes for its tranche B and C loans combined. (We combine the two in one rating, because we see them as closely linked. They are both junior loans that attract people who want to add in somewhat more risk to their lending and its auto-lend product is also tranche A loans only.)
From late March 2025, Proplend’s tranche A loans and its auto-lend account now have a 3/10 Risk Score, which is the lowest (i.e. best) score that any provider currently has. This has just ticked down from its 4/10 score.
This is off the back of the intrinsic (underlying) risks within these loans combined with its even deeper record, which provides 4thWay with more evidence for our harsh, quantitative assessment of how lenders’ results might be affected in a major recession and property crash. The risks look extraordinarily well contained.
In contrast to the 4thWay PLUS Ratings, the 4thWay Risk Scores look at just the scale of losses in a severe recession and property crash (a risk), without considering the interest rate (a reward).
The precise forecast of losses – which you have to take with a pinch of salt – in the worst-case, most awful economic scenario that it could possibly make sense to conjure, would mean just 2.41% in losses for lenders overall, which is the equivalent of just about 3-4 months’ interest.
Its tranche B and C loans maintain their attractive 6/10 Risk Score for the risks. This is a very good score for such loans, reflecting overall potential losses that would be covered in about a year’s worth of interest in Proplend’s case.
Read About The 4thWay PLUS Ratings And 4thWay Risk Scores.
Proplend’s lending team has increased its relevant banking experience over the years through new hires as well as 10 years of internal experience. Its two key decision makers, who have to approve all loans passed up to them from their lending team, are Theo Theodosiadis and Matt Carson.
Matt Carson has a lot of experience in corporate lending and managing risk.
Theo Theodosiadis brings a lot of experience at board level from companies that invested in property loans. He follows a few people that have had this role at Proplend and builds on the knowledge they have acquired over the years. Carson and Theodosiadis are backed up by other experienced people in their team.
Proplend temporarily brought on a specialist in VAT lending and they will rely on their experience gained having worked with him to continue to approve these loans, although they haven’t approved a new one for a long time now.
Proplend’s chairman was head of business banking at NatWest and Royal Bank of Scotland for 20 years, and he has substantial property lending experience.
Proplend* is exceptionally transparent and candid with 4thWay, sharing the highly detailed data we need to use bank risk-modelling and investing techniques to assess its performance. It provides us with access to its key people and answers our questions.
Published accounts indicate that Proplend was gently profitable in 2022 and 2023, after being close in the prior two years – even after the pandemic hit.
Proplend has a genuinely unique model and so success is likely imminent.
I think Proplend is a very good investment. Proplend* is an easy choice for anyone who can afford its high minimum amount for each loan and is able to take the time needed to spread across loans to cover risks. It will continue to offer lenders highly satisfactory and stable returns.
If only it offered more loans! It is currently not finding it too easy to keep up with the pace of demand.
My research into what Proplend customers think shows very common themes: a large number of them find Proplend to the best P2P lending provider they use. They like the loans, the results and the simplicity.
The downside that repeatedly comes up is that Proplend could do with having more loans, so that you can spread your money across more of them more quickly.
I know that Proplend is working on this, but, until you’re able to do that, you’ll need to limit the proportion of your total investment pot that goes into any one individual Proplend loan, so that a handful of loans don’t soak up a large part of your cash.
The minimum you can lend in each individual loan is £1,000.
At present, there aren’t a big number of opportunities to lend. At present, you might need to drip money in over a year into your Proplend account and build up your number of Proplend loan holdings, which you can then recycle into new loans as yours get paid off.
With Proplend’s auto-lend facilities, you can choose the maximum amount that you’d want to lend in any loan. It now splits its auto-lend into two different facilities:
It makes sense to use AutoLend Self Select rather than select yourself without auto-lend, as you’re more likely to take part in lending.
4thWay investors tend to be particularly complimentary about how Proplend works behind the scenes to make sure lenders are happy they’re taking part fairly.
Proplend’s lending products are available as IFISAs at no extra cost.
With the minimum you can lend in a loan being £1,000, you might sometimes find money waiting to be lent for a while, as you accrue interest to lend again. Some lenders withdraw their cash and earn higher interest while waiting for the next opportunity.
In the IFISA, it’s not quite as easy, but still doable. At least one lender using the Proplend IFISA figured out the solution. (If the following steps are too much work for you, rest assured it likely won’t reduce your overall returns all that much by skipping them.)
The lender was earning over £100 interest per month. He elected for Proplend to pay out the interest to his bank account automatically.
Since Proplend’s ISA is “flexible”, it means you’re allowed to take money out that you have put in during the current tax year, and yet put it back in during the same tax year without losing any of the current year’s ISA allowance. So, before a tax year ends, he’s earned over £1,000 in interest that he returns to the ISA.
So long as you top up with at least £1,000 in new Proplend ISA contributions each year, you’ll be able to keep doing this technique for a long time.
Lenders see a running total of the amount paid out in their Proplend account, so they can keep track of what they’re allowed to put back in. And you get an email reminder towards the end of the tax year.
Worst-case scenario, you’ll earn around one percentage point less interest per year as a result of waiting to lend, but the risk also comes down to virtually zero while you’re money is not being lent.
Proplend’s biggest strength is in the security that borrowers offer lenders.
In most of its loans, called tranche A, borrowers are very stringently restricted in how much they can borrow compared to the property valuation. 50% is the maximum, leaving a huge amount of room for problems if a borrower can’t repay and the property needs to be forcibly sold to recover your lent money. No other P2P lending provider sets a better maximum limit.
Indeed, as of March 2025, there are now no other providers that match this limit, making Proplend truly unique.
Unrelated to the news above, Proplend’s tranche A loans and its auto-lend account now have a 3/10 Risk Score, which is the lowest (i.e. best) score that any provider currently has. This has just ticked down from its 4/10 score.
This is off the back of the intrinsic (underlying) risks within these loans combined with its even deeper record, which provides 4thWay with more evidence for our harsh, quantitative assessment of how lenders’ results might be affected in a major recession and property crash. The risks look extraordinarily well contained.
In contrast to the 4thWay PLUS Ratings, which measure both risk of losses from bad debts as well as reward from interest earned, the 4thWay Risk Scores look at the risk of losses only. Specifically, the scale of losses in a severe recession and property crash (a risk), without considering the interest rate (a reward).
The precise forecast of losses – which you have to take with a pinch of salt – in the worst-case, most awful economic scenario that it could possibly make sense to conjure, would mean just 2.41% in losses for lenders overall, which is the equivalent of just about 3-4 months’ interest.
Its tranche B and C loans maintain their attractive 6/10 Risk Score for the risks. This is a very good score for such loans, reflecting overall potential losses that would be covered in about a year’s worth of interest in Proplend’s case.
Independent opinion: 4thWay will help you to identify your options and narrow down your choices. We suggest what you could do, but we won't tell you what to do or where to lend; the decision is yours. We are responsible for the accuracy and quality of the information we provide, but not for any decision you make based on it. The material is for general information and education purposes only.
We are not financial, legal or tax advisors, which means that we don't offer advice or recommendations based on your circumstances and goals.
The opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and not held by 4thWay. 4thWay is not regulated by ESMA or the FCA. All the specialists and researchers who conduct research and write articles for 4thWay are subject to 4thWay's Editorial Code of Practice. For more, please see 4thWay's terms and conditions.
The 4thWay® PLUS Ratings are calculations developed by professional risk modellers (someone who models risks for the banks), experienced investors and a debt specialist from one of the major consultancy firms. They measure the interest you earn against the risk of suffering losses from borrowers being unable to repay their loans in scenarios up to a serious recession and a major property crash. The ratings assume you spread your money across hundreds or thousands of loans, and continue lending until all your loans are repaid. They assume you lend across 6-12 rated P2P lending accounts or IFISAs, and measure your overall performance across all of them, not against individual performances.
The 4thWay PLUS Ratings are calculated using objective criteria that can be measured and improved on over time, although no rating system is perfect. Read more about the 4thWay® PLUS Ratings.
*Commission, fees and impartial research: our service is free to you. 4thWay shows dozens of P2P lending accounts in our accurate comparison tables and we add new ones as they make it through our listing process. We receive compensation from Proplend and other P2P lending companies not mentioned above either when you click through from our website and open accounts with them, or to cover the costs of conducting our calculated stress tests and ratings assessments. We vigorously ensure that this doesn't affect our editorial independence. Read How we earn money fairly with your help.
