I’m very much in the “sell Wellesley” camp for the dozens of reasons mentioned in an article on Wellesley by one of 4thWay’s experts early last year, as well as in information elsewhere on the 4thWay site. At every turn, we encounter conflicting, ambiguous or…
IFISA and peer-to-peer lending website Crowd2Fund, which offers business lending, has this month started publishing a bit more information about how its loans have performed in the three years or so that it has been matching borrowers and lenders together. So I’m taking a look…
Peer-to-peer lending is lending directly to individuals or businesses, including, sometimes, property owners. IFISAs is usually the same, with the advantage that any interest you earn and gains you make are always tax free. However, there can be a minor catch to watch out for….
You probably think a better question is “Why on Earth would I want to do unsecured business lending when I can do secured lending? It’s a good question. Secured business lending, after all, means that you are lending to a business that has property, equipment,…
Secured business lending is when borrowers have to put up assets as collateral on their loans. Those assets protect the lenders – in this case, I mean individual lenders like you and me, using P2P lending sites. Assets are things of value like properties, machinery,…
We’ve provided you with a lot of information on peer-to-peer lending sites in our very detailed comparison service since 2014. And that includes IFISAs since the first one was released. However, we’ve now created a separate IFISA comparison service to make it easier, and added…
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”…
As peer-to-peer lending website Assetz Capital’s loans have matured (got closer to their final repayment dates or been fully repaid by borrowers) we can now see better how they perform in terms of bad debt. In addition, the mix of different types of loans offered…
Taking a hard, cold look at that jumble of ideas, desires and fears we have in our own noggins should not be an afterthought, and reading about investor psychology not just something to do one idle evening in an armchair after we’ve already got our…
Thank you for all the fantastic feedback we have received from all our users, industry insiders, as well as experts in our fields who we’ve respected for a very long time. It really helps all the writers, specialists and the whole team at 4thWay to…
Some 4thWay users asked us about three P2P lending sites missing from the 4thWay comparison tables, and about a fourth P2P lending site that has been proving frustrating. Here are their questions and our answers. S Smith, 4thWay user: I think your website is very…
A long question from 4thWay reader Pete Harper about Funding Circle. Pete Harper, 4thWay user: How do you all feel about Funding Circle and their bad debts these days? I decided about 6 months ago to pull out of FC because of what seemed…
In this article today, I’m looking at P2P lending company money: which P2P lending sites put a lot of their business cash on the line? This is to follow up on the recent 4thWay article about P2P lending site founders who lend their own money…
Cliff is an experienced freelance investment journalist. Read about Cliff. P2P lending investment trusts At the end of September, I wrote an article explaining how UK investors can make money by investing in specialist funds that themselves lend investor money through peer-to-peer (P2P) lending websites or…
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…
Tax-free P2P lending through a pension is back! For a couple of years, SIPPclub helped many people use SIPPs – a kind of pension – to collectively lend more than £20 million on a range of P2P lending sites. It was covered in an article…
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…
