Hedge funds, banks and other institutions are increasingly lending their money or, more commonly, their clients’ money, through P2P lending websites. Do institutions have an advantage over us individual lenders? Here’s my take: Institutions versus the crowd Plus for the crowd: we have more choice…
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…
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…
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,…
Last update 25th June 2015. You thought that Zopa and RateSetter were the only P2P lending companies allowing you to lend to other people – rather than to businesses? Guess again. There are now 11 P2P lending companies (down from 12 due to TrustBuddy’s closure)…
This is adapted from a blog we wrote for Zopa’s website. Lending through personal loans platforms such as Zopa is part of the staple diet for both individual lenders and professionals alike. The attraction is the low-risk profile, reliable and predictable nature of personal loans….
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…
Thanks to David and UK Bond Network for letting us pinch this educational article from their own blog. It was originally entitled “Pooled accounts and Ponzi schemes – the risk of client money”. On the 20th December 2008, the sons of Bernard Lawrence Madoff contacted US…
Bad debts on the 23,000 loans issued by Zopa in 2015 so far are virtually zero, despite more riskier borrowers. In my article Zopa Risks & Lending Speed Rise, Rates Stable, I reported that Zopa is accepting more loan applications than it used to, so that it can…
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…
Hi 4thWay® News and Tips subscribers! My book, “4thWay’s Intelligent Peer-to-Peer Lending Strategies”, covers strategies to make much more money, much more safely, and it drills down to show individual strategy by each individual P2P lending website. For you, it’s free! All I ask for in…
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…
MarketInvoice is a P2P lending service that allows lenders to lend to medium- and large-sized businesses. These business borrowers put up specific invoices as collateral, and they repay lenders within a matter of weeks or months when the business receives payment of its invoices from its customers. Lenders earn…
When looking at lending to property development opportunities on the various platforms that cater for this type of lending there are many things to consider. (To find those opportunities, read about the roughly two dozen Property Peer-to-Peer Lending Websites.) I think this is probably the most…
Over half of the P2P lending platforms allow you to lend in property loans. (Read 18 Property Peer-to-Peer Lending Websites.) So you might be concerned to have read the headlines this week that house price rises have halved from over 11% a year ago to…
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…
Landbay* is a P2P lending website that allows you to lend your money to experienced buy-to-let investors. CrowdLords is not P2P lending. It’s being a buy-to-let investor yourself, albeit as part of a crowd of landlords sharing a property. Note that CrowdLords is for people…
The Sunday Morning Herald, an Australian newspaper, recently had an article that started like this: “Is peer-to-peer lending out of control? There’s certainly some cause for concern.” It cited the industry’s rapid growth as one of the reasons for this worry. To back this up, it quoted…
