Probably from April next year, any losses you make in P2P lending can be offset against your income tax. The news was announced in the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement today. Currently, losses in P2P lending either can’t be offset in the case of lending to individuals,…
Update on 5 December 2014: Wellesley’s bad-debt provision fund jumped back up to 1.8 times as amount on loan and protected by the fund dropped £20 million. Wellesley explained that its figures are entered manually, so the big drop was merely a human error. Wellesley & Co’s…
True to its word, Zopa, the world’s first P2P lending Company, has made the change it had promised to improve information in our online lending accounts. We can can now see what money is queuing and what money is in the process of being matched to new…
Again, I’m abusing my position and writing a blog about one of our own products – and yet it is something I would have written about if another company had created it. This week we have continued our series of highly detailed, plain English, informative, candid…
Zopa, the world’s oldest peer-to-peer lending company, has created another source of borrowers for investors to lend to. It is now offering unsecured personal loans to Flowgroup customers who purchase its Flow boiler, a money-saving boiler which generates electricity as it heats a home. FlowGroup…
There are at least three Estonian P2P lending companies already seeking lenders in the UK. Estonia has just 1.2 million people and yet Spain and many other large countries don’t have many more P2P companies themselves. Why are there already so many P2P lending companies…
We took a look at most of the better-known UK-based P2P lending companies to see which is currently the biggest. The answer is: it depends how you measure it. Many of them claim to be biggest in one way or another. Size is not everything, as RateSetter…
RateSetter, the biggest consumer loans P2P lending Company when measured by monthly lending, has been awarded Best Peer-to-Peer Lender at the Wealth Management Awards, which is run by the Financial Times and the Investors Chronicle. The awards aim to help investors (including lenders) to find the best…
EstateGuru, the property P2P lending website focusing solely on properties in Estonia, has become the second P2P lending Company to pay interest even if your money is not currently being lent out. In an announcement to lenders, the company wrote: “We are implementing [a] bonus…
Zopa, the P2P lending company focusing on consumer loans, is now using the same system as international passport control to check for borrowing fraud automatically in seconds, according to its new support partner. Through its partner AU10TIX, Zopa can now check scanned copies of passports…
Update: eMoneyUnion is now JustUs. It appears there has been some confusion both in the press and at the financial regulator as to whether eMoneyUnion is a property lender itself or a P2P company that matches loans for individual lenders. However, the Financial Conduct Authority has recently confirmed its…
P2P lending is an investment and all investments go through cycles. It doesn’t matter what you invest in, be it shares, property or something else, all of them are driven up and down by supply-and-demand, greed and fear. It’s the last two that cause huge bubbles…
Landbay, the buy-to-let mortgage P2P lending company, has just joined the Peer-to-Peer Finance Association (P2PFA). The P2PFA sets minimum standards for all its members, including: Setting high standards in vetting borrowers. This does not mean they cannot arrange high-interest, high-risk loans, but it does mean…
We don’t intend to use our Candid Opinion blogs to brag about what we’re up to. But if it was another company producing high-quality research, we would inform you about it either in our news articles or in our candid blogs. However, it’s us setting…
Giles Andrews, CEO and co-founder of Zopa, a consumer loans P2P lending company, was at the recent LendIt conference. His presentation, called “Born in a Barn“, showed just how far the world’s first P2P lending company has come. In ist ninth year, it has lent…
Research by Peter Baeck, Liam Collins and Bryan Zhang from the University of Cambridge has revealed that £1.6bn has been lent through peer-to-peer lending websites, whereas just £84m has been raised in the higher-risk equity crowdfunding area. Just £26m has been raised in rewards crowdfunding….
Samir Desai, CEO at Funding Circle, the largest P2P lending company focused on loans to UK businesses, did a presentation called “Building A Better Financial World” at industry conference LendIt. Samir said that expected average returns for all Funding Circle loans after fees and bad debts,…
Lending Works*, the prime consumer loans P2P lending company, has clarified what its insurance against losses will cover. Lending Works has taken out insurance to cover borrowers who can’t pay, which is provided by three insurers with assets of more than £2 billion. This is…
Mat Gazeley from Zopa has just published more details about how Zopa matches your money to borrowers in a blog post. The key takeaways Mat explained that, above all else, Zopa lenders who receive loan repayments are ahead in the queue when it comes to…
My colleague, Matthew Howard, wrote just a few moments ago about Wellesley leaving the Peer-to-Peer Finance Association (P2PFA). It seems quite possible that the company left due to differences over its savings bond. On the one hand, Wellesley & Co. is a peer-to-peer lender, matching borrowers and…
