Crowd For Angels IF ISA Factsheet

Crowd for Angels offer investors up to 12% returns in their crowd-bonds. If you’ve invested with MoneyThing, you’ll notice a popular car-finance borrower who is also listed on Crowd for Angels at the same 12% rate of return. They also offer equity shares in new companies with SEIS and EIS tax relief.

After I saw the release of their Innovative Finance ISA, I got in touch with the team for a short Q&A, but have only just got around to putting it onto P2P blog! Read more “Crowd For Angels IF ISA Factsheet” →

LandlordInvest IF ISA Factsheet

LandlordInvest offer secured lending investments in BTL mortgages or property bridging loans, paying up to 12% gross. LandlordInvest are now authorised directly by the FCA (not as an Authorised Representative), allowing them to offer the Innovative Finance ISA. Since I haven’t invested with them myself, I asked LandlordInvest to answer a Q&A to provide a basic understanding of their offering for P2P Blog.

Key Facts (General):

Expected Returns: 5-12% per annum.

Historic Returns: Platform completed its first loan in February 2017

When did you launch?: 5 December 2016. Our property-backed IFISA was launched 25 January 2017

Key Facts (IF ISA):

Minimum Investment to open ISA: £100

Minimum Investment per loan/investment: £100

IF ISA Fees: No specific IFISA fees, including for ISA Transfers In or Out

Is it a ‘Flexible’ ISA? Yes, our property-backed IFISA is flexible

Do you allow transfers in from existing ISAs?: Yes

Types of Investments: Loans secured by residential or commercial mortgages (buy-to-let and bridging loans).

A Background to LandlordInvest

How did it all begin: what is the background to the platform?

The company was founded by financial services and IT professionals. Two of the co-founders, Filip and Nik, met whilst working for a UHNW family with significant global real estate assets. Whilst working togehther, they spent months discussing various business ideas and decided that they wanted pursue a entrepreneurial path by founding a secured P2P lending platform, as they spotted an opportunity in the market given banks reluctance to lend. They were later joined by the third co-founder, Joe Vallender, LandlordInvest’s CTO.

What makes you different from the other options for P2P Investor’s money?

• Fully FCA authorised
• All loans are secured by property
• Flexible IFISA
• No pre-funding

Is there any sort of Provision Fund/ Insurance against bad debt?

We do not operate a provision fund or have any insurance against bad debt. All loans are secured by property.

Is there an Early Sell out option or Secondary Market?

We do not operate a dedicated secondary market. It is scheduled to become available end of April/beginning of May this year. We currently charge an administration fee corresponding to 0.5% of the total outstanding principal value, provided that we are able to find a buyer for that loan or loan part.

Automated Investment: How easy is it for Investors to maintain their Investment?

Investors have to choose themselves which loan(s) they want to invest in. We do not make any recommendations or offer any tools for automatic allocation.

What plans have you for the future?

Our plan it is to continue to build an investor base, and establish our own niche in an industry that is becoming quite saturated. Our aim is to offer the best risk adjusted returns in the industry.

Kuflink Review

Kuflink are a P2P lending platform which offer investments in UK property development deals. What makes them different is that they invest up to 20% into each loan on a first-loss basis, reducing the risk to investors. Note that this maximum of 20% just applies to the ‘self select’ (manual investing) loans, with only 5% on the automated investment product. Investments are between 6 and 12 months, and offer up to around 7.2% gross (i.e. if there are no defaults). They’ve now funded over £9 million in investments via their platform.

Article last update 10th Feb 2019 with the latest Cashback offer details and Secondary Market addition.

Read more “Kuflink Review” →

Unbolted Review

Unbolted is a P2P lending platform which focuses on pawn backed security loans and auction related lending, such as sale advances and ‘bid now, pay later’. Founded in December 2014, they lend out to borrowers at a representative APR of 40.3% whilst paying investors between 8% and 10.5% per annum. The lower paying 8% loans (0.65% per month) are ‘gold loans’. These are very well secured: 80% LTV against the scrap metal value with a hedge against gold price fluctuations. Read more “Unbolted Review” →

RateSetter Review

RateSetter is a British peer-to-peer lending platform that provides loans to households and businesses. Since launching in Autumn 2010 they’ve lent around £2bn, making them one of the ‘big 3’ platforms (RateSetter, Zopa, Funding Circle).

RateSetter are a ‘hands-off’ platform with no individual loan-part management/selection: you just choose an investment product and rate. For this reason it’s an easier platform to start off with for P2P lending beginners. You choose an investment product and rate of return that you would be happy to lend at, then wait for the lending market to match your offer. Choose a rate that is too high and your money will be sat there without earning interest. Choose a rate that is too low and miss out on higher returns! Read more “RateSetter Review” →

A First Look at Huddle Capital

Huddle Capital first popped onto my radar at the end of March with this post by Cooling_Dude on the P2P Independent Forum. They were offering a special promotional deal for the first 100 investors, which on first glance appeared too good to be true: 20% cashback on investments for the first 100 investors. However, when you think about it, say an average of £1,500 invested for the first 100 people comes out to £30,000 total spend in cashback, not that bad for a marketing spend to launch your new platform and iron out the problems. Read more “A First Look at Huddle Capital” →

ArchOver Review

ArchOver is a peer to peer business lender that specialises in business loans secured against Accounts Receivables (‘Secured & Insured’) or contracted recurring revenue (‘Secured & Assigned’). Since ArchOver launched in 2014 they’ve funded nearly £50 million in loans. They state an enviable track record of no Borrower missed payments or reporting defaults, whilst offering interest rates of 6% to 9% p.a. to their Lenders. Read more “ArchOver Review” →

Flender Review

Flender is a new UK/Irish peer to peer lending platform with a social slant. For a business or consumer to borrow on Flender they first have to successfully raise funds from their friends or customers before opening up the opportunity to the wider public. Flender hopes this will help to reduce defaults, and do it in addition to standard checks run by other P2P lending sites. Current lending opportunities offer interest between 8% and 11%, though borrowers can set their rate as they like. Flender makes its money from a 2.5-4% margin on consumer borrowers or a 3.5% fee to businesses after a successful funding raise; there are no fees for lenders. Read more “Flender Review” →

Property Crowd Review

Property Crowd is an ISA-friendly real estate crowdfunding platform that offers investors a chance to invest in “institutional grade” property deals from £5,000. They’ve been around since 2014, but relaunched with ambitious plans as part of Global Alternatives at the start of 2017. Those ambitious plans (a ‘cross-border property trading exchange’) were what first piqued my interest in Property Crowd, and I set up a call with one of their co-founders Charles Tan to understand more. Read more “Property Crowd Review” →