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…

This guide will be updated regularly with the latest deceptively low risk P2P lending companies – our “hidden gems”. Some P2P lending companies are, in my opinion, hidden gems. These deceptively low-risk P2P lending companies might already have low 4thWay® Risk Ratings, but they also…

This guide will be updated regularly with the latest low risk, market beating P2P lending companies If you’ve been using the easy P2P lending options: You can earn dramatically more interest while keeping your risks low. You need to be willing to put a bit of extra…

Neil wrote about the inevitability of some (not all) bad-debt provision funds eventually failing in his Candid Opinion blog, When The First Bad-Debt Provision Fund Will Fail. That blog was about under what circumstances a (hypothetical) fund can be expected to fail dramatically. Today, I…

Assetz Capital is a large P2P lending company offering secured business loans, and it has a good record when it comes to bad debts. Now, Assetz Capital is looking for investors to buy shares in itself through Seedrs, a website that enables you to buy shares…

Funding Circle has shown itself to be extremely adept at learning, so that it can improve borrower selection, lower bad debts and increase recoveries when loans go bad. Everything else being equal, this translates into higher returns. It also is likely to mean that bad…

Some P2P lending companies, like many businesses do, have been borrowing money. They might have borrowed as part of their start-up costs and they have certainly been borrowing for expansion. When a P2P lending company borrows money, it takes on risk. If its growth plans fail,…

Note that, since this article was published, Wellesley & Co. has greatly clarified its marketing and re-named the bond the Wellesley Listed Bond. Wellesley & Co. has been offering one of the safer P2P lending opportunities for individuals like you and me. However, its new…

At least one P2P lending company continues to make some unsupportable claims. The financial regulator recently reported that it’s had to ask P2P lending companies to stop bigging up the benefits while talking down the risks. Jane thinks the regulator gave the industry a B-. (Read Financial Regulator Gives…

Yesterday I wrote about why I stick to low-risk P2P lending. Today, I want to write about why I look to shares for my higher rewards. To me, there’s no competition when choosing between higher-risk P2P lending and the stock market. Regarding high-risk P2P lending,…

At 4thWay® we write all our views, both positive and negative, about P2P lending. We don’t shirk on our responsibility to tell it like it is. With this in mind today I’d like to tell you about why I stick to low-risk P2P lending instead…

Like you I am in the position to put a small sum of money aside for that rainy day to spend on my family. There is no more room under our bed, as that space was filled up many years ago with paraphernalia. We bought…

Between us at 4thWay® today we could come up with just one oxymoron that was half as good as “recklessly conservative”. I’ll tell it to you later, because first I want to write about the first. This expression was used in a preliminary paper by The Open…

What happens when, not if, a provision fund is overwhelmed by bad debts? What makes these reserve funds so solid? Before we look at how some of the bad-debt provision funds will eventually be breached, let’s look at why they’re such tough nuts to crack. Because that just…

I really don’t like to bad-mouth competition because it makes us seem petty, but this is the Candid Opinion blog, and this latest information we have received from The Big Deal is eye-opening to 4thWay® readers. Before I criticise, them, I am absolutely convinced that…

Those of you who like to take a bit more risk might try P2P lending company Mintos. Key risks It’s riskier because it’s new, having started in September 2014. It’s also riskier because, well, it’s based in Latvia, so I don’t know much about how…

I put it to the wise community at P2P Independent Forum whether personal guarantees count as secured lending. Before I share their views, here are two unavoidable definitions: Personal guarantee Business borrowers sometimes give their “personal guarantees” that they will repay a business loan using the owners’ and directors’…