By LendingCrowd. Amid the ongoing coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak, LendingCrowd stands ready to help our valued community of borrowers and lenders. With the stock market experiencing volatility in recent days, it is important to remember that LendingCrowd only lends to British businesses that have been carefully…
The FCA recently suspended a regulated financial business due to weak controls against money laundering, leaving up to one million account holders unable to access their money. The suspended company, called ePayments Systems Limited, has nothing to do with the peer-to-peer lending industry. But it…
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,…
Most peer-to-peer lending websites and IFISA providers allow anyone to lend. If you’re a beginner, they want you to commit not to lend more than 10% of your savings and investment pot across all your P2P loans. If you want to lend more than that,…
Neil Faulkner, 4thWay’s co-founder and Head of Research, has picked his top eight IFISA picks, based on his assessment of the risks and rewards. They include: Five selections that are easy to use and are good for both entry-level and expert-level investors. Five selections that…
Crowd2Fund’s CEO recently expressed strong views on the subject of industry news and forecasts, so we invited him to write about them on 4thWay. 4thWay’s editor (Neil here) added in subtitles and lightly edited. The election result helps the P2P industry grow rapidly Crowd2Fund* is…
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…
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…
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….
The Zopa login page, as well as Zopa’s cyber security in general, needs to be strong to deter hackers keen to try and take a piece of the billion pounds being lent through this peer-to-peer lending site. As WordFence says, the “secure” symbol in your…
It’s got a little more fiddly for peer-to-peer lending platforms to keep on going. New regulations that started in December have put extra burdens on them – and it seems that this was enough to tip some to the point where they’ve chosen to close…
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…
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…
You may have noticed that the lending rates you can earn are higher when a peer-to-peer lending website or IFISA first launches. Then, peer-to-peer lending rates fall over the following years to more sensible levels. The five possible causes of falling peer-to-peer lending rates are:…
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,…
Here’s a quick update on Proplend. Proplend’s finally gone and got itself a bad debt Proplend* has finally had its first loan funded by individuals turn bad, out of £70 million in lending and around 90 loans over five years. Enough time has passed that…
At 10.48am yesterday (Wednesday, 23 October), UK financial regulator the Financial Conduct Authority released this notice. This made public the news that regulated P2P lending website FundingSecure had gone bust, with CG Recovery Ltd (CGRL) appointed as administrators to the failed platform. FundingSecure operated a…
At our request, Mat Gazeley of Zopa wrote the following blog about its collections and recoveries policy, which has been published both here and on Zopa’s own website. Treating customers fairly and delivering value to them is the central idea behind Zopa. This means giving…
We try to explain peer-to-peer lending in What Is Peer-to-Peer Lending? However, it can sometimes be easier in an image. So we’ve created one for you called “How Peer-to-Peer Lending Works – For Investors”. Click on it to open it up. There is a mobile-friendly…
More common than closing down with fraud or incompetence hanging in the air, most platforms that stop doing peer-to-peer lending are simply closed because they have failed, stopped offering P2P lending products, or needed to be saved by other platforms. You never hear about most…
