Both of Lending Works’ lending accounts receive the top rating and a highly favourable review from our experts. But I’ll tell you now that there’s not an ocean’s difference between them. Still, if you’re a keen lender, some small differences in repayment timing, interest rates…
For the first time, Assetz Capital is going to declare losses on some loans, it has told 4thWay. In other words, it’s writing off bad debts that it sees no prospect of recovering in full. Its reserve funds – which it collectively calls “provision fund”…
As peer-to-peer lending website Assetz Capital’s loans have matured (got closer to their final repayment dates or been fully repaid by borrowers) we can now see better how they perform in terms of bad debt. In addition, the mix of different types of loans offered…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Cliff is an experienced freelance investment journalist. Read about Cliff. P2P lending investment trusts At the end of September, I wrote an article explaining how UK investors can make money by investing in specialist funds that themselves lend investor money through peer-to-peer (P2P) lending websites or…
When considering P2P lending websites that focus exclusively on straightforward UK personal loans, you’ve basically got the choice between Zopa, Lending Works*, Lendable and Madiston LendLoanInvest. Which is the best personal loans P2P lending site? Lendable provides no information on which anyone can assess the…
It wasn’t long ago that we compared Crowd2Fund* to Funding Circle. (Read Crowd2Fund Versus Funding Circle: Which Is Better?) Since then, I have been passed an update on bad debts from a colleague. The proportion of all-time loans that have gone bad at Crowd2Fund (the…
Tax-free P2P lending through a pension is back! For a couple of years, SIPPclub helped many people use SIPPs – a kind of pension – to collectively lend more than £20 million on a range of P2P lending sites. It was covered in an article…
This article was originally published on 11th October and has been updated due to fresh statistics from Crowd2Fund. Crowd2Fund was one of the first P2P lending sites to be granted full authorisation by the financial regulator. It does loans to small businesses paying 8% to…
There are a lot of ways to look at a P2P lending site to get a handle on the risks. Here are three ways that can lead to false positives. 1. The P2P lending site has won awards Almost since P2P lending started, P2P lending…
One of the two first questions* that Leigh Baker, 4thWay’s chief risk modeller, asks senior people in the industry is: “How much have you lent through your own P2P lending site?” What particularly interests us is not just the amount that the founders and other…
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…
Cliff is an experienced freelance journalist hired in as 4thWay’s “Chief P2P Cynic” to give you the alternative view. Read about Cliff. Typically, UK investors have two main options when it comes to lending out their cash via peer-to-peer (P2P) websites. The first is to…
It’s both invoice lending and ArchOver month at 4thWay. Since it’s high time more lenders got to understand the beauty of this kind of lending. ArchOver is one of the only invoice lending P2P sites that has provided 4thWay with all the information we need…
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…
First I’ll tell you about the lending bubble, then I’ll share my views about how much it affects us as individual lenders, and then I’ll say what action we can take now. The growing personal loans debt pile Financial advisers, debt charities and the Bank…
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.
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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 Lending Works 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.
