This update on 29th April 2025 is writing up a case in the High Court in February 2025. The judgment on the case was made on 17th April 2025 and it has just landed in my hands. Since the case is now on the public…
You have dozens of choices when it comes to peer-to-peer property lending. As far as we know, we’re listing every single one of your choices on this page that we at 4thWay consider to be P2P lending. The majority of P2P property lending websites offer…
Housemartin’s P2P Lending Account And IFISA And Classic Account has earned an Exceptional 3/3 4thWay PLUS Rating. These loans have been paying lenders around of the loan amount in interest, after bad debts. Visit Housemartin* or keep reading the Housemartin Review.
The number and type of P2P lending companies operating from the UK changes regularly. We keep this page updated every quarter. On this page, you’ll find: Full alphabetical list of the peer-to-peer lending companies in the UK. Which includes: – What types of lending they…
However, I’m not going to remind you what the latest property-price forecasts from the UK’s best-known economists are for 2025 or the next 12 months. If you want to know, you’ll have to look them up yourselves. Here’s why… What happened in 2024? To start…
My team and I have been assessing P2P lending accounts since 2014 and we continue to have a 100% record. (We won’t always get all the most important calls right – that’s impossible in investing – but we expect that we almost always will.) My…
Scroll down to see the latest nominee. 4thWay® has a Panel of Peers to govern our website on your behalf. These are individuals like you who lend their money through P2P. They are one of many safeguards we have in place ensuring that 4thWay® keeps…
History has shown so far that when P2P lending sites, close, few of them end up paying reduced returns to lenders as a result of closing down and winding down loans until they’re repaid. (Although, as usual, you can suffer losses from bad debts after…
This content today is extremely different to normal, but I need to get it out, as it’s pressing on my mind. Unusually, this page is not about a cold assessment of an investment provider or lending tips. Instead, it’s all about me. I have to…
The key risks in IFISAs are: Psychological risk: your own greed and fear. Concentration risk: you don’t spread your money across lots of loans and P2P lending sites. Credit risk: borrowers don’t repay you. Platform risk: the P2P lending site (the “platform”) goes bust and…
Lendwise’s lending accounts are unrated. These loans are expected to pay lenders around after bad debts. Visit Lendwise or keep reading the Lendwise Review.
Loanpad’s Premium Account/Premium IFISA received an Exceptional 3/3 4thWay PLUS Rating. This account has been paying interest after zero bad debts. Visit Loanpad* or keep reading the Loanpad Review.
Proplend’s Tranche A, 0-50% LTV Lending Against Property Mostly Receiving Rent received an Exceptional 3/3 4thWay PLUS Rating. These loans have been paying interest after bad debts. Visit Proplend* or keep reading the Proplend Review.
Kuflink’s Auto-Invest 2 Year Account received an Exceptional 3/3 4thWay PLUS Rating. This account has been paying interest. Visit Kuflink* or keep reading the Kuflink Review.
Initially published well over a year ago, this page has been updated in March 2025. P2P lending companies’ financial health is of great interest to lenders and of course to us at 4thWay. If a P2P lending company is already making money then it lowers…
December 2024 had the most write-offs since July 2014 at about £4 million, but the interest paid outweighed that, so the month was still positive overall. That nudged up the year’s return to end on 7.61%, after costs and all losses. The 4thWay Peer-to-Peer…
Both Invest & Funds accounts received an Exceptional 3/3 4thWay PLUS Rating. The standard account and the IFISA have been paying , after fees. Visit Invest & Fund* or keep reading the Invest & Fund Review.
The main peer-to-peer lending risks are: Yourself (psychological risk). Not enough diversification (concentration risk). Losing money due to bad debts (credit risk). Losing money due to a P2P lending site going bust (platform risk). Losing money due to a solvent wind down (more platform risk)….
What are the best Innovative Finance ISAs? The best innovative finance ISAs are these nine, which offer a market-leading risk-reward balance: CapitalRise IFISA. (Minimum £1,000 per loan.) CapitalStackers IFISA. (Minimum £2,500 per loan.) CrowdProperty IFISA. (Minimum £500 that can be split across 10 loans.) Housemartin…
CapitalStackers’ Property Lending Account/IFISA currently has two alt ratings of secured and hidden gem, as we have no doubt it will receive the top 4thWay PLUS Rating soon, when its history is sufficient. These loans have been paying lenders an average interest after bad debts. Visit…
CapitalStackers* does development loans with its lenders taking the junior position. This means that another lender – typically a bank – will get its money back first if there are issues with the loan. It also does some bridging loans.
CapitalStackers matched its first P2P loan in March 2014. Lenders have lent £42 million.
CapitalStackers’ high interest rates have been backed by exceptional results. This has led to average returns of 13.41%. The lowest return has been an outstanding 5.64% and the highest a whopping 30.60%.
CapitalStackers puts it fees on the line first and the directors invest very heavily in the loans themselves, especially in the riskier layers.
The directors and close family have always lent a large amount of money in the same loans. Still today, they do 1/4 of the lending. They lend alongside you through the same online lending platform, so they put their wealth firmly on the line.
CapitalStackers focuses on an interesting area that is still less common in P2P, and where other providers have had hit-and-miss results.
Its focus is on providing the additional cash over and above that provided by banks to complete developments.
The banks used to offer these loans too, but have pulled back considerably since the Great Recession, leaving developers short of the funds they need to get developments completed.
“CapStack” lenders might typically put their cash down first, e.g. to assist a property developer in buying the land. Yet you’ll be just second in line for being repaid in the event a loan goes bad. So you’re behind another lender such as a bank (which provides the “senior debt”).
You may also be third in line, if CapitalStackers splits the loan into two layers. Lenders who choose to take the higher risk in third place earn higher interest rates.
It doesn’t stop there, as loans can be split into as many as five layers.
As the junior lender in most development loans, you’re paid considerably more interest. CapitalStackers* passes on substantially more of the rewards to lenders than other P2P lending companies doing similar loans.
The average loan size is just 64.38% compared to the expected sale price of the completed developments.
That helps to give solid cover if issues cause development costs to rise, or if the property needs to be repossessed and sold, or sold in a hurry at a cut price.
On average, senior lending is for the first 36.60% of total lending to the borrower, when compared to the estimated value of the finished development.
If you exclude loans where lenders through CapitalStackers are the senior and junior lenders, and just include those where high-street banks are senior, the senior part on average is more like 55%.
On those loans, the total lent reaches about 70% or even 80%. If a property were to be sold for half the expected price, you could expect to lose all your money in that loan. Now you can see why CapitalStackers awards such high interest rates to lenders.
But that only tells part of the story. The borrowers are very high quality and when things go wrong the borrowers and CapitalStackers have shown the agility to adapt the development plans and pull through. Plus, CapitalStackers builds in an enormous runway in case of development or property sale delays, or for higher costs.
CapitalStackers’ team is right up there as one of the most competent we have seen. It has many decades of relevant banking experience, it has high standards, including ethical standards, and it does appropriate risk modelling using professional firms. It covers all the bases.
Whenever borrowers have suffered any issues, CapitalStackers has proven themselves to be talented at finding ways to help developers get their projects completed and the properties sold.
I’m very happy to have these people providing high-interest investments.
CapitalStackers works closely with high-street and specialist banks to arrange the deal, where the bank is the senior lender and CapitalStackers’ lenders are the junior ones.
Funding for developers is fully arranged in advance and disbursed in phases. At some P2P lending companies, there’s the risk that a developer completes part of a project, but then the money dries up for the remainder of the development work, because it’s not been fully agreed or raised in advance. So I like seeing that it’s all settled up front.
All the development loans have planning permission. As well as using its own considerable experience, CapitalStackers gets independent valuations on all properties and developments.
CapitalStackers* takes diligence in assessing loan applications, and monitoring loans and developments, to a whole new level – beyond the comprehensive assessments we would usually expect for these kind of complex, high-interest loans.
They understand the borrowers and have a far better understanding of the numbers than we usually expect – or even require – to see for these sorts of loans.
Their expertise has enabled them to help developers to complete projects and sales when unexpected issues have arisen. CapitalStackers has shown the skill and ingenuity that we would hope for in responding quickly and helping the developers get their projects back on track.
All loans issued in CapitalStackers’ first six-and-a-half years have been fully repaid with full interest. Some of those loans went very late, but those delays are normal and expected in most development lending, and the proportion of loans going very late is well within sensible bounds.
Quite a few loans issued back in 2022 are seriously delayed or soon will be, due to inflation, construction worker shortages and property-market issues. That is the first year to have had severe issues across a high proportion of loans.
Also, as of the beginning of 2025, for the first time in ten years, two outstanding loans in the riskiest layers of the stack now seem likely to lose money, as their prospects worsened through 2024.
In one of those loans, CapitalStackers’ management and the borrower directors will lose all their interest and most of their lent amounts, as they are in the riskiest layer. At present, all other lenders are still shielded from the expected losses, as they sit in safer layers further down.
The other bad loan now might see full losses of interest and lent amounts for CapitalStackers’ management in layer four, and for all lenders in the next riskiest layer – layer three. The layer beneath that – layer two – can now possibly expect some loss of interest.
Thus, for the first time, ordinary lenders using CapitalStackers’ online lending platform can expect some losses. That loss appears to be roughly equal to 1.5% of the total lent through CapitalStackers.
It was inevitable that lenders would lose money at some point in some CapitalStackers loans, especially as you’re receiving very high interest rates for very junior lending to developers. These losses are therefore well within expectations, considering the difficulties faced by borrowers who started in 2022.
Interest earned by lenders so far has been 16 times those potential losses for individual lenders.
CapitalStackers doesn’t yet have the history behind it for us to do our bank-like tests of its loans in a severe recession or property crash. Yet I’m certain that it will pass those tests easily and receive 4thWay’s PLUS Rating of 3/3, “Exceptional”.
This means this hidden gem will one day become the highest-paying account to have earned the top rating.
With the risks so well managed, lenders who take the time they need to spread across as many loans as they can will be lending with an excellent margin of safety.
CapitalStackers is exceptionally transparent with 4thWay. It provides a huge amount of access to its people and supporting information. It goes so far as to give us the information it submits to the financial regulator and a whole lot more, giving me a lot of confidence.
With lenders, too, CapitalStackers now provides pretty clear and comprehensive statistics, and it does its best to explain how these complex loans work. I would encourage you to give the decision makers a call to discuss their statistics and individual loans; it’s an opportunity you can’t get with all P2P lending providers.
CapitalStackers* is already profitable – a rarity at the moment in the burgeoning P2P industry – and indeed it has been for many years now. It’s a small business but with very low costs, making it seemingly easy to sustain.
It has backing from an accountancy firm. It has a network of connections that we believe will enable it to expand and grow further, offering more loans as more lenders are attracted to it.
A soft security probe of CapitalStackers’ lending portal finds it to be in good health with no apparent malware. It is marked clean by Sucuri, Google Sage Browsing, McAfee and other internet and security technology providers.
CapitalStackers’ website is secure and it automatically directs you to a secure version of its site.
Its website technology is up-to-date and it runs a firewall to monitor and if necessary block information going into and out of the website.
If you want to choose just one potentially very high-return investment for your lending and investing portfolio, CapitalStackers* is the one.
An extremely professional business and with heart to go with it – I think you’ll find it hard to find a borrower or investor who feels let down by CapitalStackers in any way.
The minimum lending amount at CapitalStackers is £2,500 in each loan, which is high compared to most P2P lending companies. When you’re buying second-hand loans from other lenders, the minimum drops to £500.
CapitalStackers currently approves relatively few loans, but you don’t have to transfer money until the loan is fully sold. You’ll need to take quite a few months to spread your money across more loans.
Yes, CapitalStackers has an IFISA.
Yes, you can sell your loans to other lenders, if they want to buy. CapitalStackers doesn’t charge for this, although it reserves the right to do so in future.
As the development progresses, the certainty of successfully completing the project increases. Therefore, with CapitalStackers’ loans, the risk of losses falls considerably as the months go by.
As a result, you can often sell your loans for more than you paid. The lender who buys your share effectively gets a lower interest rate that better fits the lower risks, and you increase your total profits. Read more in The Safest 20% Returns In P2P Lending.
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.
We are not financial, legal or tax advisors, which means that we don't offer advice or recommendations based on your circumstances and goals.
The opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and not held by 4thWay. 4thWay is not regulated by ESMA or the FCA. All the specialists and researchers who conduct research and write articles for 4thWay are subject to 4thWay's Editorial Code of Practice. For more, please see 4thWay's terms and conditions.
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 CapitalStackers 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.
