Peer-to-Peer Lending Vs Bonds

Most peer-to-peer lending sits in the sweet spot with potential rewards considerably above savings accounts and yet risks below the stock market. And its incredibly steady record since 2005 certainly supports that. But where exactly does peer-to-peer lending sit compared to bonds? Peer-to-peer lending has…

How The Financial Ombudsman Protects Your P2P lending

I have a lot of professional and some personal experience with the Financial Ombudsman Service, all of it good. This powerful and excellent service has helped millions of people. It handles complaints about financial businesses that are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. This includes…

Is Lending Works Still A Good Investment?

Lending Works has adjusted its forecasts of lender returns and bad debts for new loans. It’s increased the amount of borrower payments that now cover bad debts, with lending rates remaining attractive in its highest-paying account. All this has taken place after hiring a new…

Who Can Invest In Peer-To-Peer Lending?

Peer-to-peer lending (including P2P IFISAs) is classified as one of the safer alternative investments, which is why it’s available to all who wish to invest by lending directly to other people, businesses and property owners. But, since it’s still a relatively new form of investing,…

Do “Sophisticated Investors” Have Less Legal Protection?

Jocelyn, 4thWay subscriber, wrote: “I’m having real problems understanding what the implications are of saying that I am a sophisticated rather than retail investor in the new appropriateness checks, and I wonder whether 4thway will be doing a short piece on this – I tried…

The P2P Lending Sites That Spread Your Money Across Every Loan

You can go to this comparison page that is filtered for you to compare peer-to-peer lending platforms that automatically assign you to loans, or that offer you the option to do so. So: Which peer-to-peer lending platforms spread your risks? Most of them do not…

Growth Street’s Largest Loans Turn Bad

There’s been quite an exciting development at Growth Street. I use the word “exciting” to mean it’s a story with a lot of bang, rather than good news. Certainly not for me, as it reveals a mistake by me. Probably my biggest since co-founding 4thWay….

Man Down! (I Mean, Person Down. Or Persons.)

We’re still down several persons for our Panel of Peers, so I hope you’ll consider volunteering. The Panel governs 4thWay on behalf of all lenders to ensure it remains  independent. 4thWay’s Panel of Peers maintains our accuracy, impartiality, and candid research. I’m glad to say…

P2P Pensions Guide

Note that this page was last updated in December 2019. Most people benefit from automatic tax breaks on peer-to-peer lending as explained in our guide: How Is Peer-to-Peer Lending Taxed? However, not everyone does, which can make lending through a pension attractive. And there are other advantages…

Personal Peer-To-Peer Lending: It’s Underrated!

Before you start to assess a P2P lending website or IFISA provider that does personal loans, it really helps to understand the characteristics and features of personal peer-to-peer lending. In other words: what are you getting into when you lend your money in these loans,…

How To Check The Financial Services Register For Monsters

Peer-to-peer lending websites and IFISA providers that do not appear to have the correct permission from the financial regulator are the ones that are most likely to turn out to be the real monsters that cause panic, fear and financial loss to individuals. Below, you…

What’s Happened To Crowd2Fund? Update 2019

Crowd2Fund looked like it was going to take off. It was going to raise millions of pounds in startup funding through its own users this year. It was going to hire experienced staff. And it was going to become very transparent with its data, so…

Thoughts On Lendy And BondMason Closures

This is just a brief note on the two recent P2P lending site closures. Lendy has closed after lenders suffered a high amount of late and bad debt, as well as very expensive legal problems, among other things. (I wrote about some of its issues…

Create A Balanced ISA Portfolio

This is quite a bit of fun for me today. I’m going to look beyond peer-to-peer lending to my old, very well-trodden stomping ground of shares and savings, where I spent nearly 20 years of my life before peer-to-peer lending took over. If you want…

4thWay CEO’s 6 Top Property IFISA Picks

A property IFISA is a tax-free investment account where you can lend to borrowers who have real property – real estate – to back up those loans. This piece is based on a vast amount of research over many years. I could have easily made…

Future Reserve Fund Shock To Upset Many P2P Lenders

I’m going to explain some of the strengths and limitations of reserve funds. Then I’m going to write about three simple steps you can take to give yourself the level of safety you probably want and have expected all along, to get yourself prepared for…

How 4thWay’s CEO Selects P2P Lending Sites

I have always invested in investments that are relatively easy to analyse, so that I have a good chance of being able to weigh up the risk-reward balance properly, and invest with a large margin of safety. The types of investments I choose also need…

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