MSE News: Peer-to-peer ISA offering 4.7% interest is rolled out - but beware of risks

The five currently operating IF ISA providers and a regularly updated list can be found here. One more due next week.

Describing Lending Works as a "major" P2P lender appears misleading given that they only lent 2.4 million Euros in January 2017. The UK biggest five, Funding Circle, Zopa, RateSetter, Lending Works and Assets Capital, lent 121, 94, 78, 37 and 22 million respectively. Maybe you were scammed by something using major to mean every P2P lender that had interim permission from the FCA? Several dozen of them!

They did get a million Pounds of new lender money in the first few days and temporarily suspended accepting more while they line up new deals. A sign of what's to come in IF ISA popularity, perhaps.

Their most unique feature is insurance that can repay loans where that's affected by unemployment, accident, sickness or death, combined with a protection fund. The insurance should help to keep things in good shape during a recession.

They have been very responsive to ISA corrections and clarifications and that's a good sign if their customer service is as excellent.

They look like an interesting choice for those who want safety first, at the cost of lower returns (though higher than the protected Zopa and RateSetter products).

Yes, that's how things work. You normally have some responsibility for deciding which loans are a good deal, particularly on the risk side of things. The ones where you pick the loans tend to offer higher interest rates. Bond Mason is a lower work alternative that picks loans for you and expects to deliver about 7% after bad debt. It's an interesting choice for those who want a hands off approach. But no ISA yet from them.

I suspect that these p2p lenders are going to get deluged with new money - the last of the "better" long term cash ISAs are maturing or have matured - there must be a LOT of people who think that equity markets are too high to move into S & S ISAs - but are they going to find enough sound investment prospects ??