Rebuilding Society is a relatively well-established platform which has funded £17 million in business loans since launching in 2013. It is regarded as an innovative platform, being the first to launch a ‘buyback guarantee’ feature to the UK peer-to-peer lending market. Unlike many UK P2P platforms, investors can read details about the lending opportunity and state the interest rate they are prepared to lend at. Please read my comprehensive Rebuilding Society review below, and if you find it useful, I would be grateful if you would sign-up via my referral link. By doing so, you will benefit ..read more

On Thursday 5 December 2019, Landbay emailed all of its retail investors to announce that effective immediately, the platform would be closing all retail investor accounts. Landbay was widely regarded as one of the safest peer-to-peer lending options, with all loans were backed by residential buy-to-let mortgages. The email sent to all investors quoted: I am writing to tell you that we have decided to stop operating the retail P2P part of our business with immediate effect. Since launching in 2014, we have never failed to provide the investment returns we promoted, as our loan port ..read more

As far as I could tell, nobody has posted an analysis of who audits the various UK peer-to-peer lending platforms, so for this post, I thought it would be interesting to take a little look. I focused solely on the platforms included in my P2P lending guide. The results are in… Less than a third of UK P2P platforms are audited. Which accountancy firms audit the P2P platforms? Of the 11 audited P2P platforms in the UK market, PWC is the big winner, auditing the two biggest P2P lenders, Funding Circle and Zopa. The next most successful firm is EY, who audit the third largest l ..read more

Today marked deadline day for P2P lenders to introduce new FCA rules (announced 4 June 2019). In addition to restricting retail investors from investing more than 10% of their investable assets, the rules set out: More explicit requirements to clarify what governance arrangements, systems and controls platforms need to have in place to support the outcomes they advertise, with a particular focus on credit risk assessment, risk management and fair valuation practices. Strengthening rules on plans for the wind-down of P2P platforms if they fail. Introducing a requirement that platforms as ..read more

On Wednesday 30 October, Funding Circle emailed all existing investors to advise of changes to the secondary market. These changes were undoubtedly made to improve liquidity in the platform following months of negative publicity around increased selling times. From the start of 2019, P2P Independent Forum user ‘criston’ has usefully tracked the changes in the amount of time it takes for investors to sell their Funding Circle loans via the secondary platform. At the start of the year, a user reported selling their investment in just 2 days. However, liquidity soon dried up, with sales in ..read more

CrowdProperty is the only platform offering property project loans (including bridging, auction, refurbishment, conversion and development loans) that is a member of the Peer-to-Peer Finance Association (P2PFA), a self-regulatory body for peer-to-peer lending which aims to provide increased transparency around loan book performance. To date, the platform has funded over 150 property project loans with a 100% capital and interest payback record to investors.  In order to reduce risk, CrowdProperty takes first charge security on all loans listed on the platform, typically offering investor r ..read more

Unbeknown to many investors in the RateSetter platform, you don’t have to accept the immediately available quoted rates. In fact, you can theoretically obtain an interest up to 5.0% higher than the quoted rate. RateSetter is named as such due to investor’s ability to set the interest rates they are willing to accept. However, it’s not immediately obvious how to do this and so accepting these lower rates is a common mistake made by many when first investing on RateSetter. If this is the first time you have heard about RateSetter, be sure to also check out our RateSetter review here. S ..read more

Loanpad is a peer-to-leer lender focused on providing the lower risk portion of secured bridging/development loans. All loans are shared with other established lending companies – these lending partners accept the higher risk portion of each loan. Loanpad has quickly become one of my favourite P2P platforms. If you read my Loanpad review and decide to invest, I would be grateful if you would sign up with my referral link (in doing so, you will benefit from the current cashback deal). Cashback: £50 / £150 Minimum investment: £1,000 / £10,000 Returns ..read more

It’s important to understand that peer-to-peer (‘P2P’) lending companies are middlemen. Their principal goal is to connect investors with credit-worthy borrowers. In a perfect world, this three-party scenario works well for all parties. The investor benefits from an interest rate exceeding those on offer from traditional bank savings accounts (albeit with higher risk, as no FSCS protection applies). The borrower often benefits from lower interest rates and quicker lending decisions than those achievable via traditional high-street banks. The P2P platform benefits from matching the two ..read more

Unlike other consumer lending platforms such as RateSetter or Lending Works which focus on unsecured consumer lending, Unbolted focuses on secured consumer lending (pawnbroker style lender). If you are looking for an Unbolted cashback offer on your initial investment, you will be disappointed to hear that the platform has not offered a cashback deal for a number of years. However, there are a range of platforms which do offer cashback (see our P2P cashback page), including RateSetter and Lending Works. Unbolted - Secured Consumer Lending (Pawnbroker) Cash ..read more