Zopa lenders have so far lent £800 million and this week their grand total interest earned hit £50 million. That’s since Zopa launched in 2005. But over one-third of that interest has been paid to lenders in the past year alone, as Zopa grows rapidly…
Low-risk RateSetter has overcome considerable regulatory barriers to become the first personal loans P2P lending website to allow its lenders to lend through a pension. Indeed, two pensions. Lending through a pension means you pay no tax on the income you earn. Pensions come with…
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…
One of the first measures of risk in a P2P lending company is its historical – or “actual” bad-debt rate. This shows how many pounds of loans have gone bad as a proportion of the money lent. The bad-debt rate is variously called the “loss rate”, the…
Forecasts might not be the best way to decide whether to lend through a particular P2P lending website, but there are plenty of other ways to do so. UK Bond Network, a P2P lending website, recently sent 4thWay® enough data to get listed in its comparison…
I remember working at stock-market investment website The Motley Fool when Stuart Watson was the editor. He was a smart guy. That’s why, when I told him a friend was re-mortgaging his house to invest in the stock market, he had a very intelligent response,…
Here’s a short, but certainly sweet, article. I just had to pull a recent 4thWay® article explaining how 13% earned interest and 6% bad debts could leave you with a profit of less than 2%, all because we are taxed on the bad debts that…
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…
Lending Works lending strategy is short and simple, because this P2P lending website is simple and easy to use. You have limited strategy options available, but it still requires a little bit of maintenance. Lending Works Lending Strategy: take it or leave it! Many P2P lending websites…
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…
Lending Works, one of the safest P2P lending companies, has just made two new announcements that are quite interesting – but only if you’re 55 or older, because they just apply to you. 1% bonus interest for new lenders If you join Lending Works and offer…
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…
Savers were given a new tax break in the Budget on Wednesday, but it wasn’t clear at the time whether that was going to extend to your P2P lending. Zopa has told us today that it just received confirmation from the Treasury that it does…
P2P lending company Funding Circle is now offering 20% off Virgin Train travel to people lending their money through its service. Funding Circle is the fifth largest net lender to businesses in the UK and it offers a low risk, market beating opportunity to individual…
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…
With additional reporting by Matthew Howard. The Budget today contained several direct effects on peer-to-peer lending: No tax deducted automatically from savings Over the passed few months, the Treasury has been umm-ing and ahh-ing over whether to ask P2P lending websites to automatically deduct basic-rate income tax…
We needed to fill a few gaps in Landbay’s data in our detailed comparison tables, so today I interviewed John Goodall, CEO. Landbay is one of the safest P2P lending websites, focusing on high-quality residential buy-to-let landlords and properties. It has clear, strict lines in…
