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…
P2P lending website ArchOver*, which does secured and insured business loans, has just launched its secondary market, so that you can now buy and sell existing loans. However, it is highly unusual and so it requires explaining. Two key facts Before I waste your time,…
Savings accounts are ideal for short-term savings. The only real risk in the short term of a big sudden loss to your savings is if the UK government is suddenly unable to pay its debts and it decides to swipe them from people who have…
A leak to the Financial Times has revealed that Funding Circle* is planning to be the first P2P lending website to create its own investment fund – and it’s got some very interesting features, so pay attention. It’s called the Funding Circle SME Income Fund. Here’s what…
If you’re asking yourself: “Are interest rates high enough on these development loans?” “Are bad debts low enough on these personal loans?” “Is pawnbroking P2P lending too high a risk?” “Is the loan to value low enough on these buy-to-let mortgages?” “Do these guys really have…
Higher lender demand forced RateSetter interest rates downwards in the first two weeks of July, as RateSetter tempted more lenders to lend more money with a cashback offer. (See RateSetter’s Interest Rates Tank.) Now the cashback deal is over, interest rates in most – but not…
Yorkshire Building Society has conducted a poll of financial advisers. It found “just” 18% of advisers have lent their own money in peer-to-peer lending or would consider doing so. Another 20% haven’t decided yet. It was just an online poll of 101 advisers, but these numbers don’t…
Costs aren’t everything, but history shows that – for investment funds – they’re just about the biggest factor that affects your returns in the long run. We have a few options for investing in P2P lending funds, so let’s look at their costs. Just before…
Zopa‘s* Giles Andrews yesterday said of the new P2P lending ISA (from April 2o16) that it “will, I believe, provide reliable, predictable and low risk tax free returns that will beat most other asset classes.” Beating savings is easy Certainly it will outperform savings accounts and…
On the one hand we have buy-to-let P2P lending website Landbay* showing that buy-to-let returns have beaten all other assets over the 18 years to the end of 2014. On the other, we have a This Is Money article calling buy-to-let a “£200 billion time bomb”….
I wrote about my interview with CapitalStackers‘* Steve Robson in CapitalStackers: High Property Returns With Lower Risk. Today I’d like to explain about the potential to make a profit here by buying and then selling loan parts to other lenders, rather than just buying loan…
Hedge funds, banks and other institutions are increasingly lending their money or, more commonly, their clients’ money, through P2P lending websites. Do institutions have an advantage over us individual lenders? Here’s my take: Institutions versus the crowd Plus for the crowd: we have more choice…
Funding Circle* has just added an extra borrower grade: grade E. It has also renamed C- to D. So you can now lend in six categories of borrower: A+, A, B, C, D and E. You do not have to lend at the higher-risk grades…
We now have around two dozen different property P2P lending websites to choose from and probably around half do property development loans. Property development lending usually pays you more interest, and with good reason: the outcome of the loan is less certain. Let’s look at that uncertainty…
Here’s an outline my current thoughts on the advantages and disadvantages of peer-to-peer lending funds: Potential advantages of peer-to-peer lending funds A fund that has real quantitative risk modelling expertise is going to have an edge over many of the P2P lending websites themselves, many of which, in this new industry,…
Last update 25th June 2015. You thought that Zopa and RateSetter were the only P2P lending companies allowing you to lend to other people – rather than to businesses? Guess again. There are now 11 P2P lending companies (down from 12 due to TrustBuddy’s closure)…
This is adapted from a blog we wrote for Zopa’s website. Lending through personal loans platforms such as Zopa is part of the staple diet for both individual lenders and professionals alike. The attraction is the low-risk profile, reliable and predictable nature of personal loans….
The latest news doing the rounds is that new legislation is soon to allow peer-to-peer investment funds in ISAs, which means tax-free lending. Thing is, ISA providers have been allowing this all along! Hargreaves Lansdown spokesman Danny Cox has confirmed this to us. And Andy Donald, speaking…
Updated on 23 June 2015. P2P Global Investments is a P2P investment fund that has just raised another £250m from investors, who had already handed over £200m at its launch in May 2014. The most interesting aspect of this is whether we should be lending…
Thanks to David and UK Bond Network for letting us pinch this educational article from their own blog. It was originally entitled “Pooled accounts and Ponzi schemes – the risk of client money”. On the 20th December 2008, the sons of Bernard Lawrence Madoff contacted US…
