ThinCats

Ninjawombat

Hi all,

I've just registered to lend on ThinCats http://www.thincats.com/

Has anyone else on the board registered? Its a rather new peer-to-peer lending service for businesses only, so I'm not sure how it's going to work out for me yet.

The returns look to be better than that of Zopa but then the minimum lending amount is £1000..

jamesd

One of the very interesting features there is the ability to lend from within a SIPP. That means it may be able to realise some of the potential diversification benefits that are harder to realise at Zopa because of the tax treatment of bad debt.

paddyrg

Can't say I feel reassured by the state of its website, may be worth keeping an eye on though.

emperorbruce

ThinCats is quite different from other P2P lending websites round the world. As far as I can tell its the only one offering SECURED loans and its making fewer bigger loans. It's clearly aimed at experienced investors who manage a portfolio and like to make their own decisions. Because they offer fewer, larger loans they can take more time and trouble vetting them and they provide a lot more information about the borrower than any other P2P lending website. You can download a 20-30 page report which includes a full credit report on the company and the directors as well as information about the business. With other systems you often don't know the names of the people involved! So far I have only leant £1,000 to one business to find out how it works but I'm arranging to set up a SIPP to do more.
I don't think that ThinCats is competing with Funding Circle and Zopa, in making secured loans of up to £1m it's competing directly with the banks and presumably Thincats can get better interest rates because borrowers have difficulty getting anything out of banks and even when they do it's very expensive. It will be interesting to see what happens to ThinCats rates if the banks ever start lending to smaller businesses again but until then I should be able to get 10% on my money with no charges or annual fee. When I take into account the tax benefits of lending through a pension fund ~ 40% discount, that has to be worth the inevitable risks with this type of deal. However, if you only have a few hundred pounds to play I think you should stick to Zopa.

tonycottee

Sounds like a completely impartial and fair view. Thanks for joining MSE to tell us.

Apples2

Must be a record, a whole 2 days for the spamfest to start.

jamesd

It'd be nice to know which SIPPs allow this investment.

rumdiddlyum

thanks for the great info

paddyrg

So 2 new members just joined to say 'so far so excellent' - that reads as forum spam to me, guys, no chance I'll ever go anywhere near you - p2p lending depends on trust, and I don't trust you to play honestly if you join forums just to post hyperbole.

emperorbruce

jamesd wrote: »

It'd be nice to know which SIPPs allow this investment.

My Independent Financial advisor was able to access a database of such SIPPs together with details of their charges.

emperorbruce

paddyrg wrote: »

So 2 new members just joined to say 'so far so excellent' - that reads as forum spam to me, guys, no chance I'll ever go anywhere near you - p2p lending depends on trust, and I don't trust you to play honestly if you join forums just to post hyperbole.

My apologies; I thought that this was a place to discuss our actual experiences. On that basis I would have thought that people who are members of Thincats and have actually made loans should be encouraged to discuss the facts as they find them.
I've now checked out some of your other posts I can see that you have had a hard time as a borrower before with P2P lending so I can understand that you might have a jaundiced view of these things.
Perhaps I should have done my homework before posting - I will not make the mistake again.