With bond interest rates plummeting to near zero, it is only a matter of time before a lot of people lost money, as was explained in yesterday’s FT article Bond market fireworks flash warning signals. When bond interest rates drop, it means people are paying too…
For most peer-to-peer lending companies, a bad debt amounting to a mere 0.15% is not noteworthy. But it’s different for Lending Works. Because this is the first time it has suffered at least one bad loan. Prior to now, its 16-month record of nearly 2,000 loans had…
Research by Cambridge University shows the UK is now storming ahead of its European neighbours in its acceptance and use of alternative finance, with the market swelling to £1.9bn in 2014. Although this growth is great, its speed, together with the newness of the sector,…
CrowdProperty took five months to get its first deal completed, but just five weeks to do its second. Clearly, it’s speeding up. New P2P lending websites can offer interesting opportunities. The interest rates tend to be higher, so if you can satisfy yourself that the…
Zopa latest: Speed of getting money on loan: up Proportion of loans accepted: up Riskier borrowers: up Interest rates: stable Zopa has taken steps to help get lenders’ money on loan faster and to stabilise rates, and set a scene which could lead to…
Welcome back to the third course of my 4th way. For my returning readers you’ll know that I began to look at the idea of venturing into P2P lending in Follow Me As I Learn to P2P. When I had reduced my selection down to…
Sometimes I read in the financial pages what some commentators are saying on P2P lending and I’m quite unimpressed. The general message seems to be that if you dip your toe in with a small investment, you’ll learn quickly that it’s safe, and then you can go all…
Buying buy-to-let properties is a very different investment to lending to buy-to-let investors. But both are great investment opportunities in very different ways. Landbay is a P2P lending websites that offers loans to landlords with tenanted residential properties. 4thWay® rates it as one of the safest P2P…
UK Bond Network will be the next P2P lending website to be added to the 4thWay® comparison tables this week. UK Bond Network is for high-net worth investors or those classed as “sophisticated” only. If that’s not you then you should probably look away now. The most…
The loan acceptance rate can be incredibly useful for lenders like you and me, since it can be a strong indication that a P2P lending opportunity has strict borrower selection standards. If a P2P lending website accepts no more than around 20% of applicants, rejecting…
Lenders can use the bad-debt rate to see how low bad debts have been in the past on a P2P lending webste. An average annual bad-debt rate of 0.5% during a moderate or good economic backdrop is very low, for example. Any bank would be…
The Bank of England is asking the UK’s biggest banks and building society to perform stress tests again. Like last year, the tests are not as extreme as the events of 2008-10. The argument is that that period was seen as a rare event that only happens…
The founders and directors of LendInvest, Wellesley & Co. and Assetz Capital have over two dozen limited companies between them either as part of their P2P lending operations or as companies very closely related to them. Why? More specifically, is this an extra risk that we lenders…
This is the story of whacky individual lenders and their high-risk loans. The problem is that this doesn’t seem to be a rare event! I see this happen on numerous P2P lending websites. But I’m going to take FundingKnight as my example today. I only use…
Generally, individual lenders get their money lent out swiftly. However, it doesn’t always work out that way. One 4thWay® reader wrote this month: “I recently opened an account with LendingWorks, but no money has so far been lent out. I did contact them and they said…
Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs has ruled that individuals lending their money through P2P services must pay tax on their lender fees from 6 April 2015. P2P lending website Zopa revealed this in an email to its lenders this evening. Up to this point, lender fees…
I listened to the Money Box interview Neil referred to in P2P Lending is Not Like Picking Shares. (Yes, I’m eight months late too, but I hadn’t even heard of 4thWay® back then.) In that interview, Andy Mullinger of Funding Circle, a business loans P2P lending…
Zopa, one of the safest P2P lending companies and the oldest in the world, has given the vast majority of its lenders higher returns over the past ten years than a large variety of investments, including the stock market and savings accounts, according to its…
Welcome back to those who read my previous article (Follow Me as I Learn to P2P), and welcome to those who have not. In my previous article, I revealed my desire to save/invest after having my curiosity piqued by reading some 4thWay® articles. I am…
Where is the Bank of England taking us? And how does it trick us into letting it do so? The Bank of England does a quarterly poll to see where ordinary people think inflation is going. It’s last survey was in February. Please allow me to tell…
