Peer-to-peer lending sites: MSE guide discussion

itwasntme001

Ewanwhosarmy wrote: »

Very interesting to read the new regulations, its' a very complex space with everyone seemingly having their own models. I've been looking into investing in Zopa and Funding circle as well as some of the new companies that seem to be springing up. This one caught my eye as being interesting as they're offering much higher returns, love the name - punk.money

lol with a name like punk money and more platforms coming you can tell it is getting crazy. Best to get out now if you have not already.


Why on earth do you expect for it to be a good investment when the borrowers have been turned down by banks who have actual expertise? There is a good reason why they have been turned down.

firestone

not sure about punk money(or the name for that matter!) but of the other two mentioned and regarding bank expertise Zopa has been given a bank licence so hopefully they do know about lending and Funding circle have had money from the govt. in the form of the British Business bank

brian_h

Beware of some of these, I invested £20k with London Capital & Finance IFISA advertised interest rate of 8% on a comparison site on this very website. The company did not lend out the money as they stated, but siphoned it off into other related companies, they are now in administration, SFO are involved and FSCS have (so far) washed their hands of it.

masonic

brian_h wrote: »

Beware of some of these, I invested £20k with London Capital & Finance IFISA advertised interest rate of 8% on a comparison site on this very website. The company did not lend out the money as they stated, but siphoned it off into other related companies, they are now in administration, SFO are involved and FSCS have (so far) washed their hands of it.

No, LC&F was never listed on this website. What you saw was a fake comparison site. In its heyday the company marketing LC&F mini bonds was able to get right up the google search rankings on searches of certain keywords and it made full use of advertising on arsebook, but not the legit comparison sites.

P2P has already experienced one or two similar issues as LC&F. It is another sector that is exempt from FSCS protection, so nobody should be under any illusions about being bailed out by the FSCS in the case of a platform being a scam or operating unlawfully.

itwasntme001

I have a small amount invested with Collateral and have moved home recently so am wondering who to contact to make sure they have the right address, or does it not matter?

masonic

itwasntme001 wrote: »

I have a small amount invested with Collateral and have moved home recently so am wondering who to contact to make sure they have the right address, or does it not matter?

You should contact the Joint Administrators (now Joint Liquidators). You should have the email address they are using for correspondence with COL lenders. Though it is unlikely they will try to send anything to you by post.

DragonQ

The only cash I have in P2P (Kuflink and RateSetter) has already paid out via cashback offers, so I already have a decent return on the money even if they come back with no other profit. I believe they both spread cash out too so there's minimal risk of losing everything.


I wouldn't put a huge chunk of cash in any of them though, as with anything that is on the higher-risk, higher-reward side of things.

fun4everyone

Everyone involved in p2p is scamming in some way.

Albermarle

I would go further and put a limit of 5% per platform so people could only go as high as 10% if they had some diversification.

The question always in my mind is how can this % be checked ? What is to stop a potential investor just lying about the size of their total investable assets ?

Zero_Sum

Albermarle wrote: »

The question always in my mind is how can this % be checked ? What is to stop a potential investor just lying about the size of their total investable assets ?

Also what do you include & exclude?
Property, Pension etc?