Is peer-peer lending worth investing in

quotememiserable

I guess OP is talking about thincats. Its not a scam of any sort, is p2p lending like the others but with a high investment needed that puts it out of reach of a lot of people. And they certainly don't promise to return anything, they predict. As with all p2p the risk sits with the lenderr.

sandyinvent

It's obviously a better rate of return than say a bank savings account, but there is a risk involved and the longer the term of the loan the higher the chances of a default, especially at the higher end of the interest rates.

Factor that in aswell as well tax before taking in the headline interest rate as your actual return.

juanmanuelmarquez

it maybe a good juicy rate at 12% but the RISK would be very very high, so your very likely to lose half your money or maybe all, so its not worth it! your better off studying the currency and invest when you think your getting a solid rate, and then re-sell back, ive been doing that since 2004, and made a good healthy profit. Or invest in gold!

Your best off with cash isa, little but your money is safe! better be safe than sorry....

agent69

P2P lending is a new marketplace and most of the participants haven't been around for long.

Any company with a good credit history and a decent business plan can get a loan from FC for between 7 - 9%. Why would they pay 12% at the likes of FK?

Obvious conclusion is that they are too risky for FC to accept, and that FK may be accepting higher risk borrowers to build the business up.

I've got a small amount invested with FC and Z and won't be going anywhere else in the near future.

quotememiserable

juanmanuelmarquez wrote: »

it maybe a good juicy rate at 12% but the RISK would be very very high, so your very likely to lose half your money or maybe all,

Well, any investment vehicle that loses half to all of the capital is way beyond high risk. Thincats have a current default rate of 0%. That is likely to rise of course, but keep things in perspective.

easteregg_2

The top 4 P2P companies in the UK - by current loan book - are Zopa, Funding Circle, RateSetter and ThinCats. These make up over 98% of all P2P loans currently. There are several new companies such as Squirrl.com, Funding Knight and ReBuildingSociety who are new entrants into this field.

All of these companies have been in business several years and have a track record of performance. Peer-to-peer lending, or crowdlending, isn't risk free, but you don't lend all of your money to one individual or company. You need to spread it out to at least 50 individuals or companies, preferably more, so that if one does default you will not lose all of your money.

I run the P2P money website and every month I publish the latest loan statistics, so lenders can see what the actual bad debts are and they can compare and contrast these with estimates.

http://www.p2pmoney.co.uk/companies.htm#baddebt

newlender

Hi All,

I've read the above thread with much interest.I've only recently come across crowdfunding as an investment option, I've tried a few of the sites mentioned above by lending nominal amounts. So far I've recieved all my repayments as scheduled and havent found any problems yet.

I do also make a point of doing my own checks on the businesses that i'm thinking of lending too, which I think everyone should do, especially on these kind of invetsment platforms.

I'd like to know whether those of you that are unhappy with the default rates of your loan books did some of your own background checks, and if so what checks did you carry out?