How did I get here? It’s a question that many investors – in any investment – might be asking quicker than you think. Let me get to the point in a laborious and roundabout route. I’ve always been a fan of stock-market tracking funds: index…
Here is the RateSetter lending strategy. RateSetter is one of the simplest and easiest P2P lending offerings available. Lend using the market rate Most of us using RateSetter lend and re-lend our loan repayments automatically using the “market rate”, which is the average rate achieved the previous day. Currently…
This article is about how much you should split between savings accounts/cash ISAs and peer-to-peer lending, and also shares if you want more diversification further up the risk scale. I also discuss the money you might put into buying your own home. Those are what…
Last updated on 6 September 2015. There’s not much point lending your money if you can get similar rates with savings accounts and cash ISAs! That’s why it makes sense to compare the P2P lending interest rates to the very best savings accounts and cash ISAs (tax-free…
My colleague Neil wrote about how we need to defend ourselves from financial disasters in 2 Rules To Lend Easily And Be Safe From Recessions. Today I want to look at another big item that we need to protect ourselves from: greedy P2P lending websites….
Our research shows that if you: Stick to low risk lending Spread your money across several P2P lending websites and lots of loans Be willing and able to lend and re-lend for five years, and Don’t lend when interest rates sink too low Then your…
Peer-to-peer lending is not quite like any other investment. It’s really like being your own personal bank. But you don’t do all the hard work! No. Because you own the bank. So others do most of the work for you. Setting up your bank As…
Savings accounts are ideal for short-term savings. The only real risk in the short term of a big sudden loss to your savings is if the UK government is suddenly unable to pay its debts and it decides to swipe them from people who have…
Higher lender demand forced RateSetter interest rates downwards in the first two weeks of July, as RateSetter tempted more lenders to lend more money with a cashback offer. (See RateSetter’s Interest Rates Tank.) Now the cashback deal is over, interest rates in most – but not…
Yorkshire Building Society has conducted a poll of financial advisers. It found “just” 18% of advisers have lent their own money in peer-to-peer lending or would consider doing so. Another 20% haven’t decided yet. It was just an online poll of 101 advisers, but these numbers don’t…
Costs aren’t everything, but history shows that – for investment funds – they’re just about the biggest factor that affects your returns in the long run. We have a few options for investing in P2P lending funds, so let’s look at their costs. Just before…
Zopa‘s* Giles Andrews yesterday said of the new P2P lending ISA (from April 2o16) that it “will, I believe, provide reliable, predictable and low risk tax free returns that will beat most other asset classes.” Beating savings is easy Certainly it will outperform savings accounts and…
Funding Circle* has just added an extra borrower grade: grade E. It has also renamed C- to D. So you can now lend in six categories of borrower: A+, A, B, C, D and E. You do not have to lend at the higher-risk grades…
We now have around two dozen different property P2P lending websites to choose from and probably around half do property development loans. Property development lending usually pays you more interest, and with good reason: the outcome of the loan is less certain. Let’s look at that uncertainty…
Here’s an outline my current thoughts on the advantages and disadvantages of peer-to-peer lending funds: Potential advantages of peer-to-peer lending funds A fund that has real quantitative risk modelling expertise is going to have an edge over many of the P2P lending websites themselves, many of which, in this new industry,…
The latest news doing the rounds is that new legislation is soon to allow peer-to-peer investment funds in ISAs, which means tax-free lending. Thing is, ISA providers have been allowing this all along! Hargreaves Lansdown spokesman Danny Cox has confirmed this to us. And Andy Donald, speaking…
Updated on 23 June 2015. P2P Global Investments is a P2P investment fund that has just raised another £250m from investors, who had already handed over £200m at its launch in May 2014. The most interesting aspect of this is whether we should be lending…
First Great National (a P2P lending website, not a train operator!) has joined a small number of other P2P lending website casualties since the industry began in 2005. The other closed P2P lending companies we know about include GraduRates, YES-Secure and Quakle, which I wrote…
Crowdstacker is a brand spanking new P2P lending website that helps you lend to businesses. It offers you British businesses that: Are well established. Have a compelling business proposition. Pass Crowdstacker’s financial health checks, which includes fraud checks and checks on their market and industry trends…
There was an article in the Financial Times this week about bonds (High time for greed to yield to fear). It was very oblique and unclear, since it was largely quoting analysts and investment banks, all of whom, in my experience and opinion anyway, generally refuse to stick…
