Additional reporting by Matthew Howard The University of Cambridge is making a reputation for itself in analysis of P2P lending and other “alternative finance”. It’s focus so far has really very much been on statistics that are of interest to the P2P lending companies, but unfortunately…
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…
P2P lending company Unbolted, a pawnbroking offering that we wrote about in New Peer-to-Peer Pawnbroker: Unbolted, has now got off the ground with four small loans and one very large one. I’ll just summarise these loans now, so that you can get an idea of…
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…
Particularly if you use P2P lending companies where you can choose your own borrowers, you might be interested in lending to borrowers who are offer you a “second charge”. This article is about what security this gives you as a lender. We really try and…
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…
Landbay has today revealed a few of its key statistics that help us to better understand the low-risk, BTL property P2P lending company. We can now see the average size of the BTL mortgages we’re lending in through Landbay, rental coverage and now, at last,…
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…
Here are the latest high-rate loans that are open for you to bid on from rebuildingsociety, the P2P lending company that finances riskier loans to businesses. C grade loan to spa centre This spa, beauty and health centre wants to borrow £25,000 for five years. The loan is…
Hargreaves Lansdown, a stockbroker as well as the UK’s largest investment fund “supermarket”, has added even more credibility to the P2P movement by confirming it will offer the service to its 675,000 customers. (A fund supermarket is a service that gives you access to lots…
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…
The Financial Conduct Authority published its first report since it took over regulation of P2P lending. It visited five of the larger P2P lending websites to “assess the governance, management and controls of five market participants to understand the risk that the sector poses to our statutory objectives.”…
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…
Saving Stream is a secured loans P2P lending company that has been paying around 12% to lenders, with no losses to its 2,000 lenders. Now, in addition, it has launched the Saving Stream Provision Fund. Saving Stream Provision Fund Not only does Saving Stream lend…
