2018 was another record year for peer-to-peer lending, with several big players passing major milestones last year. Big numbers and positive returns During 2018, Zopa passed the £4 billion mark for cumulative lending since launching in 2005, while cumulative loans at RateSetter passed £3 billion…
From our point of view, it was never a good start for Lendy, formerly called Saving Stream. Since the beginning, it never passed the basic, simple tests cited in principles one and three of 4thWay’s 10 P2P Investing Principles. In short, Lendy hasn’t provided enough…
We have some rare information about CrowdProperty‘s performance and it looks like it is finally opening up, allowing a wee bit of analysis of some the risks. This is great for me, because I’ve suspected that this is one of the rare P2P lending sites…
Proplend has launched an auto-lend feature for its “tranche A” property loans, whether you lend through its regular account or its IFISA. Proplend’s tranche A loans are for a maximum of 50% of the property’s valuation. Many loans are against properties that are earning income for…
The collapse of a green-energy project that was crowdfunded to the tune of £3.9 million gives valuable lessons to individuals funding new and complicated infrastructure products through peer-to-peer lending sites. Here’s what happened followed by 10 lessons for lenders in future. What was the loan…
LendingCrowd’s Growth and Income peer-to-peer lending accounts, including the IFISA versions, have now earned “Excellent” 4thWay PLUS Ratings. Previously, just LendingCrowd’s Self Select lending account and IFISA had earned a rating. Why have these accounts been upgraded so soon? The two LendingCrowd* accounts have been…
[orangebox title=”Page Summary – 2 Minute Read”] 4thWay’s credit-investment specialists, bank risk-modelling experts and investors first developed the peer-to-peer lending and P2P IFISA ratings system in 2014. 4thWay PLUS Ratings incorporate both the rewards – the interest you earn – as well as the biggest risk…
Peer-to-peer lending is lending directly to individuals or businesses, including, sometimes, property owners. IFISAs is usually the same, with the advantage that any interest you earn and gains you make are always tax free. However, there can be a minor catch to watch out for….
Peer-to-peer lending website Collateral UK went out of business in February 2018. It was quickly alleged to be operating without the correct permission from the financial regulator. It now appears to have appointed administrators, who we can expect to wind down the website and existing…
Proplend Proplend* has given an update on its P2P mortgages to commercial and residential property owners that are leasing out their properties. One loan was repaid about a month late. Lenders earned an extra 20% interest in the month they were waiting for their money…
New Lending Works* IFISA customers can earn between £50 and £500 cashback, if you transfer cash ISA, share ISA or IFISA cash into the Lending Works IFISA. This is a very limited time exclusive offer. Even we don’t know how long we can exclusively offer it…
What we learned about RateSetter’s experiments Rhydian Lewis, RateSetter’s* CEO, got the chance to present his business recently. I’ve set the above video to start from the point where I think it might be particularly interesting to individual lenders as regards to RateSetter’s own business,…
This week I received a newsletter from a popular money-saving tips website that said: “Peer-to-peer lending isn’t the only option for savers keen to earn more – there’s also investing to consider.” It was just yet another time that I’ve heard P2P being described as…
We have had a lot of requests for updates on the big three P2P lending sites, namely Zopa, Funding Circle and RateSetter. There’s an awful lot of important things to say about each of them, so here goes: Zopa Core earns a 4thWay PLUS Rating…
We’re not a P2P “industry news” site, but we do like to report news if it directly helps individual lenders to make better lending decisions, which is our entire raison d’être. A lot of news like this has occurred over the past six weeks or…
Cliff is an experienced journalist hired in as 4thWay’s “Chief P2P Cynic” to give you the alternative view. Read about Cliff. A couple of months ago, towards the end of March, I had a one-to-one meeting with a leading light of the peer-to-peer (P2P) lending…
The operators dealing with P2P lending in the Evolution SIPP, which is possibly the best pension for P2P lending, have just announced that they will not allow new P2P lending. In addition, other pension providers offering P2P lending might reduce or remove their services for non-advised…
The 4thWay Alerts Service lets our email subscribers know when a 4thWay writer has seen any major changes at a P2P lending website that he/she would want to be informed about personally – speaking as lenders themselves. I have seen several changes at Wellesley & Co.* since I…
Full authorisation from the financial regulator paves the way for Lending Works’ IFISA – a tax-free P2P lending account – in just a few weeks. It’ll be the first truly established P2P lending provider to get authorised and to get its IFISA released. Lending Works…
We at 4thWay are tough bordering on mean when we assess P2P lending companies. This is reflected in our recently upgraded P2P ratings. I want to tell you about these new PLUS Ratings, now shown in our comparison tables, so you know how you can use…
