P2P 2021
I’ve been inactive on the blog over the past year. So much has changed, and many of the old reviews are now completely out of date. Rather than updating the old reviews (which may be useful for future reference) I am planning to write a new series of posts called ‘P2P 2021’ which will revisit the P2P platforms I am / was investing in.
Read more “Peer to Peer Lending in 2021”
P2P News
I noticed today that MoneyThing had introduced premiums and discounts onto the secondary market. I had one loan that I had been trying to sell for a good few months and wanted to try it out.
My first questions were:
P2P News
To start with, could you tell us a little bit about Blend Network: in particular, what is it that you offer to investors, and what is your process to find good borrowers?
Blend Network is a peer-to-peer property lending club. We connect investors who are looking to earn a good return on their money with small and medium experienced property developers who need funding for their property projects. We offer our investors the opportunity to invest on property-secured loans that will earn them double-digit returns – last year, the average return for our lenders was 12% p.a. and some of our loans had a 15% return p.a. All our loans are secured against first-charge on the property and we have zero default on our loans. In regards to the borrowers, these are very experienced small and medium property developers looking to build more affordable houses across the UK. For example, the borrowers behind a typical loan we did last year were two very experienced property developers, they had nearly 60 years of property development among them. They approached Barclays to get a loan to build eight houses, Barclays said no but referred them to us. We were able and very happy to fund this loan, the project is doing great and the borrowers have already made an early repayment. This is the profile of our typical borrower at Blend Network. We find our borrowers both directly and through our network of introducers.
Read more “Blend Network Interview”
P2P News
Last week Kuflink added a secondary market to their platform, allowing investors to buy and sell existing loans. Giving more details on how it works, Kuflink said:
Read more “Kuflink Adds a Secondary Market”Lenders can list most loan parts on the market, although some restrictions apply – loans in default or less than a month from their redemption date are not eligible, for example. Loan parts must be sold for par value.
The platform will charge a nominal 0.25% administration fee to the seller, whereas the market is free to use for buyers.
From the Kuflink Press Release
Analysis
I requested a sell out of my funds in the Assetz Capital GBBA account around a year ago, on July 23rd 2017. The GBBA account is the ‘Great British Business Account’ which is currently on series 2 offering 6.25% returns with a discretionary provision fund. I wasn’t particularly worried about the account or the returns from my investment, but I wanted to try to invest it myself either on some of their manual loans or on other platforms with a higher risk/return.
There have been some questions around selling out of the GBBA and the utility of the discretionary provision fund on the account. It is great to have a safeguard against defaults, but in practice, if you need access to money in the the short term, what happens? This is my progress selling out around £2400 from my GBBA investment over the last year: Read more “Assetz Capital GBBA Sell-Out Progress”
P2P News
I wrote a post back at the start of March shortly after I heard that the UK P2P lender Collateral went into administration. As an investor in some Collateral loans it took me by surprise, and at that time I was hopeful of a recovery of the capital invested. This post is to look at some of the developments which have progressed since then. Read more “Collateral Administration Update”
P2P News
The following article is a guest post from Yann Murciano, CEO of Blend Network.
Since November 2016, as part of the Small Business Enterprise and Employment Act 2015, the UK’s nine major banks are legally required to refer those SMEs they refuse to finance to an alternative provider. The last figures published in August 2017 for the first nine months of the scheme were quite unimpressive: less than 3% of small businesses referred to alternative lenders via the bank referral scheme [1] were funded, that is some £4m in completed funding deals for the first nine months of the scheme. However, despite a sluggish start, we are now seeing an increase in conversion rates. Recent months have showed a significant pick-up in referrals, partly due to promotion of the scheme by the banks themselves. Of course, full effectiveness of the scheme will take time to achieve but if recent trends are something to go by, the trend looks encouraging. Read more “Where do you go when the bank says no?”
Analysis
It’s getting close to April 5th: the end of the current UK personal tax year and the last chance to use your £20k ISA allowance. You can split your ISA allowance between more traditional Cash ISAs and Stocks and Shares ISAs and the newer Innovative Finance ISA (IF ISA). However, choosing an IF ISA can be more difficult:
Here are some questions that you should be asking yourself when you are choosing an Innovative Finance ISA provider: Read more “Questions to ask when choosing an IF-ISA”
P2P News
P2P lender Kuflink are offering £100 cashback for a minimum £500 investment on the platform. Although originally this offer was available quite widely, as of October 2018 Kuflink had reduced it to £50. Kuflink have confirmed to me that they will continue to offer the original £100 to those who sign up via the link below. They have also added a £250 cashback for those investing over £5000, with the same link.
P2P News
The pawn-come-property secured lender Collateral has gone into administration. Read more “Collateral Goes Into Adminstration”