This week I received a newsletter from a popular money-saving tips website that said: “Peer-to-peer lending isn’t the only option for savers keen to earn more – there’s also investing to consider.” It was just yet another time that I’ve heard P2P being described as…
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…
We’re not a P2P “industry news” site, but we do like to report news if it directly helps individual lenders to make better lending decisions, which is our entire raison d’être. A lot of news like this has occurred over the past six weeks or…
Cliff is an experienced journalist hired in as 4thWay’s “Chief P2P Cynic” to give you the alternative view. Read about Cliff. A couple of months ago, towards the end of March, I had a one-to-one meeting with a leading light of the peer-to-peer (P2P) lending…
The operators dealing with P2P lending in the Evolution SIPP, which is possibly the best pension for P2P lending, have just announced that they will not allow new P2P lending. In addition, other pension providers offering P2P lending might reduce or remove their services for non-advised…
The 4thWay Alerts Service lets our email subscribers know when a 4thWay writer has seen any major changes at a P2P lending website that he/she would want to be informed about personally – speaking as lenders themselves. I have seen several changes at Wellesley & Co.* since I…
Full authorisation from the financial regulator paves the way for Lending Works’ IFISA – a tax-free P2P lending account – in just a few weeks. It’ll be the first truly established P2P lending provider to get authorised and to get its IFISA released. Lending Works…
We at 4thWay are tough bordering on mean when we assess P2P lending companies. This is reflected in our recently upgraded P2P ratings. I want to tell you about these new PLUS Ratings, now shown in our comparison tables, so you know how you can use…
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This article is updated regularly. Last updated on 20 July 2015. Funding Circle is currently returning cashback to lenders on loans secured against property. There are currently four loans paying up to a record 10% interest and 2% cashback that Funding Circle grades as A+. (Scroll down to see them.)…
This article is updated as and when Lending Works changes its rates. Last updated on 20 July 2015. Lending Works* interest rates don’t change often, but it can be worth paying attention when they do. Today, the “super prime” personal loans P2P lending website has increased…
Today’s Budget does “just under half” of the £37 billion of cuts that Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne is attempting in order to clear the deficit. This tax-raising Budget puts pressure on both individuals and businesses: it’s more money going to pay old government debts…
RateSetter is going to pay up to £100 cashback to lenders who are signed up before 1 July 2015 – so if you’re not already registered but want to take part, you need to act now. The cashback offer will be on any money you…
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…
Some Zopa news today, starting with the best bit: Zopa lenders are, on average, achieving higher rates than those projected by Zopa. Lenders exceeding targets Zopa removed its guaranteed rates at the beginning of this year, but its seems to be getting the hang of…
The Financial Conduct Authority – the UK body that regulates financial companies – has issued a warning that scammers are now operating in peer-to-peer. It writes, in its usually over-cautious way, that it “believes” that a company calling itself “Zopa Loans Reviews” is pretending to…
Wellesley & Co.*, a property bridging and development loans P2P lending website, is now reporting its first bad debt, although recovery prospects look good. Wellesley & Co., has matched money from individual lenders like you and me to borrowers in nearly 200 large property loans…
This is just a brief note to say that, this weekend, Wellesley & Co. has slightly dropped the interest rate on its 30-day notice account, which it calls its Easy Access account, from 3.66% to 3.55%. We wrote about Wellesley & Co’s other interest rate…
This article was updated on 2 May, to explain an additional interest rate change made by Wellesley on that day. Property P2P lending website Wellesley & Co. has increased interest rates on all its deals as of today, 1 May. Except for one deal which went…
Proplend has now launched a “secondary market”, which is where you can buy and sell existing loan parts. Previously, with Proplend, you could just lend your money at the start of a new loan and there was no secondary market where you could sell it…
