Zopa, the oldest P2P lending company in the world – the one that started it all, right here in the UK – turned 10 today. Let’s look into how well it has contained losses, even during the worst recession for nearly a century, and how…
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…
Unbolted now has a bad-debt provision fund to cover at least the first part of your lending losses. The fund will operate as a trust in the same way as the other P2P lending companies. The new pawnbroking P2P lending company already offers lenders protection…
Until recently, FundingSecure has been bragging that no lenders have lost any of their starting money. But it had to happen eventually. Now, a small number of lenders have collectively lost £512 of their starting money. Presumably all those lenders are up overall, because FundingSecure…
Back on Wednesday, 30th July 2014, there was an interesting interview on Money Box on BBC Radio 4. But I only just listened to it this morning. At roughly 13 minutes in, the conversation turns to one man’s experiences with peer-to-peer lending. That man is…
Lending Works has probably completed around 1,000 loans in over a year. Late payments are inevitable, as are bad debts, and yet, despite the high number of loans, it has only just now got its first late payments. Today, late payments rose from zero to…
This is the second article in 4thWay’s Lending Strategy series that focuses on strategy for a single P2P lending company, and I’ve decided to go with another big one: Funding Circle. As you will see reading the various strategies and techniques below, you can get up…
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…
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…
