Trouble at Spain’s Largest P2P Lender

P2P-Banking and El Espanol have broken worrying news over the past couple of days. Comunitae, a large European peer to business lending platform, have detected internal fraud and are suspending activity – probably shutting down.

What Happened?

Comunitae is Spain’s largest P2P lender, and one of the largest Euro-SME lending platforms. Founded in 2008, they’ve raised over €3.5 million in external funding (for platform development). Data from Altfi shows an all time lend of around 45 million euros, 9 million of which was in the year to date.

At the start of November, Comunitae sent out a letter to its investors explaining that they had interally detected fraud affecting 18 guarantors. El Espanol explains that their own risk analyst was complicit in a form of payment fraud with various businesses. Comunitae state in their investor email that there are now criminal proceedings against the employee in question. Read more “Trouble at Spain’s Largest P2P Lender” →

Property Partner Crowdfund ~£3m Development, breaking UK Record

Property Partner have broken the UK record for a property crowdfund with their latest student property development. The development: 65 student blocks in Newcastle is expected to yield 6.13% after all costs and fees. To put the size of this deal into context, I took data from their latest open house (September 2017). Read more “Property Partner Crowdfund ~£3m Development, breaking UK Record” →

Funding Circle & The Zopification of SME Lending

There’s a significant change coming to Funding Circle investing on September 18th.

With £2.5 billion in loan finance under their belt, Funding Circle have done a rebrand to their website. However, it’s not just the front end that’s changing: soon Funding Circle are removing the ability for manual investing and reselling. Read more “Funding Circle & The Zopification of SME Lending” →

P2PBlog Mentioned Among Top Blogs

I had a nice email from Anuj Agarwal (the founder of Feedspot) recently to say that P2PBlog.co.uk had been included in their list of the top 100 Peer to Peer Lending blogs. At first I thought… how did they find 100 Peer to Peer Lending blogs? Read more “P2PBlog Mentioned Among Top Blogs” →

Property Moose Launches Lower Risk-Return Loans

Property Moose is one of the UK’s largest Property Crowdfunding platforms. I’ve reviewed them in more detail in this review and they continue to be one of my largest personal P2P/crowdfunding investment platforms. I spoke with the founder, Andrew Gardiner, on a new type of loan investment they’ve just launched.

The Existing Investment Mix

Most of the investments to date on Property Moose are equity investments in individual properties (‘SPV’s). A few of the more recent investments were split into an equity part and a loan part. The equity investors took on more risk, but had the potential for higher returns. The loan part investors had a fixed rate of return but were first in line to get back their capital.

The New Loan Product

In future, some (not all) of the new investments will be split ~50/50 between an equity part and a loan part. The loan part will have: Read more “Property Moose Launches Lower Risk-Return Loans” →

What’s happening at Landbay?

Landbay is a peer to peer lending platform which specialises in Buy to Let mortgages. I’ve reviewed them in detail here, and produced an interactive data visualisation on their loan-book data last December.

Compared to other P2P lending sites, Landbay’s returns are lower: 3.43%-3.75%. The borrowers themselves only pay between 3.88% and 4.65%. This is due to the type of loans they offer: long term loans secured against BTL property. Loans are at a max Loan to Value of 80% with at least 25% margin of safety between the interest payments and rental income. On top of this, Landbay have additional provisions which allow them to step in and become a receiver of rent if necessary, and maintain a provision fund.

So in terms of the loans themselves, at least for a non-FSCS protected P2P lending site, it sounds quite safe.

I’ve had a few people contact me via the contact email for this blog. Their shared concern was that Landbay’s loan origination was too low, and that although the loans may be relatively safe, there was a higher platform risk with how they saw things were going. This post aims to understand these concerns and then try to find out what’s really happening at Landbay. Read more “What’s happening at Landbay?” →

The Budget 2017 & Alternative Finance

Today, the Chancellor Philip Hammond released his first budget. I’ve been through the key points to see what impact, intended or unintentional, it will have on the UK alternative finance sector. The short answer is, P2P Lending: not much, Crowdfunding: possibly negative. Read more “The Budget 2017 & Alternative Finance” →

RateSetter Terms Update

For RateSetter investors that missed the note in their monthly statement, they are making a change to their provision fund terms from the 1st of March: Read more “RateSetter Terms Update” →

RateSetter Ends Welcome Bonus Midnight October 6th

A recent article on the Peer-to-Peer Finance News suggested that RateSetter’s generous £100 welcome bonus for new customers was coming to an end. A favourite of newbies to P2P lending, the new customer bonus gives an effective 10% return on a £1,000 deposit with a well-established platform even before interest returns. Read more “RateSetter Ends Welcome Bonus Midnight October 6th” →