What is the one huge difference between equity crowdfunding and peer-to-peer lending? The risks of P2P lending are generally lower than the stock market. Whereas equity crowdfunding – buying shares in startups through websites – is among the riskiest investments this side of a scam, making it…
Both of Lending Works’ lending accounts receive the top rating and a highly favourable review from our experts. But I’ll tell you now that there’s not an ocean’s difference between them. Still, if you’re a keen lender, some small differences in repayment timing, interest rates…
For the first time, Assetz Capital is going to declare losses on some loans, it has told 4thWay. In other words, it’s writing off bad debts that it sees no prospect of recovering in full. Its reserve funds – which it collectively calls “provision fund”…
When considering P2P lending websites that focus exclusively on straightforward UK personal loans, you’ve basically got the choice between Zopa, Lending Works*, Lendable and Madiston LendLoanInvest. Which is the best personal loans P2P lending site? Lendable provides no information on which anyone can assess the…
It wasn’t long ago that we compared Crowd2Fund* to Funding Circle. (Read Crowd2Fund Versus Funding Circle: Which Is Better?) Since then, I have been passed an update on bad debts from a colleague. The proportion of all-time loans that have gone bad at Crowd2Fund (the…
This article was originally published on 11th October and has been updated due to fresh statistics from Crowd2Fund. Crowd2Fund was one of the first P2P lending sites to be granted full authorisation by the financial regulator. It does loans to small businesses paying 8% to…
There are a lot of ways to look at a P2P lending site to get a handle on the risks. Here are three ways that can lead to false positives. 1. The P2P lending site has won awards Almost since P2P lending started, P2P lending…
One of the two first questions* that Leigh Baker, 4thWay’s chief risk modeller, asks senior people in the industry is: “How much have you lent through your own P2P lending site?” What particularly interests us is not just the amount that the founders and other…
It’s both invoice lending and ArchOver month at 4thWay. Since it’s high time more lenders got to understand the beauty of this kind of lending. ArchOver is one of the only invoice lending P2P sites that has provided 4thWay with all the information we need…
First I’ll tell you about the lending bubble, then I’ll share my views about how much it affects us as individual lenders, and then I’ll say what action we can take now. The growing personal loans debt pile Financial advisers, debt charities and the Bank…
At first glance, Assetz Capital’s* Property Secured Investment Account looks pretty much like what I always thought its Great British Business Account was really meant to be. Its British business account describes itself as lending in loans that are “usually” backed by land and property,…
There’s a hidden cost that we at 4thWay have not given much attention to so far, but we’ve just had an email from one of you about it. It’s called “cash drag”. Cash drag is when you have money sitting in your P2P lending account…
We have had a lot of requests for updates on the big three P2P lending sites, namely Zopa, Funding Circle and RateSetter. There’s an awful lot of important things to say about each of them, so here goes: Zopa Core earns a 4thWay PLUS Rating…
One of my colleagues wrote a 4,000-word report on RateSetter, explaining some recent troubles it has had as well as his opinion on whether individual lenders should sell RateSetter loans now. It’s called Fact Check: RateSetter Hit By £80m Of Struggling Loans. I know that…
The safest type of lending is lending to borrowers who own investment properties. This means lending to landlords who own and rent out any of the following: Residential properties (houses and flats). Shops. Offices. Factories. Car parks. Workshops. Other land or properties. What makes investment-property lending…
It’s exciting for me to see changes in 4thWay’s comparison tables, but how are the different P2P lending products in those tables ranked from top to bottom? And how has this enabled new entrant Growth Street to go straight to the top of the table?…
The fact of the matter is that Funding Circle is absolutely the stand-out leader in unsecured business lending: It has a very long and large history to assess its record: £2 billion in loans since 2010. No-one else comes close. Its performance has been highly admirable…
Last year, RateSetter announced changes to its bad-debt provision fund that will now take place in March. The old way RateSetter’s provision fund worked Individual lenders lend to specific borrowers (although you don’t get to choose your borrowers). RateSetter’s bad-debt provision fund covers losses that…
It can be a little exasperating to see individual lenders using the comments section under my articles on 4thWay, or in their emails to me. The main cause of the exasperation is when they write something like this: “I’ve earned good money with that P2P lending…
I wrote this piece to give those of you new to Wellesley a little background to go with the recent sell alert from my colleague, Neil Faulkner, which you can read here. What Wellesley does Wellesley does development and bridging loans. It has four loans…
