Advice re Savings Stream (Lendy) P2P

mikesndbs

Hello

With the drop in savings rates my cash ISA is not doing well at all.
I want to find a better return and have been directed by a few friends to savingstream dot co dot uk

This is all new to me but I have done a little reading on P2P and more or less it seems secure if a little complex.

I also see there are P2P ISAs but none from the big companies.
What would members advise please?
Initially as a test would be looking at putting in £1000.

Thanks

masonic

Recent discussions here:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5503719
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5505869
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4313323

And a dedicated forum:
http://p2pindependentforum.com/board/58/saving-stream

Dan83

Use the P2P forum as mentioned above. They have a section for all the main P2P platforms.

I use wellasly, funding circle and saving stream. Wellasly is easy, put your money in and they do everything else, but you get a poor rate. I've never had a loan Finnish on time in funding circle and I'm currently slowing with drawing from funding circle. Saving stream can be slow, for example, if you want to invest your £1000 in 10x £100 new loan parts, it could take weeks or months, there wasn't any new loans last week.

Alternavly you could invest in 2nd hand loan parts, but every time I've looked over the last few days, all the loans on the 2nd hand market only have short terms left.

personally I don't touch loans with short terms left on them.

I'm looking at a few other P2P platforms.

Remember, in P2P you have to declare your interest and if it puts you over your £1000 personal allowance, you will pay tax, which brings the 12% on offer down to about 9.6%.

yorkie3

Saving Stream is great if you're prepared to read valuation documents and do some research. If you want a more hands off approach, I suggest you look at something more automated like Bond Mason.

JohnRo

The entire p2p loan business has shades of the wild west about it. Testing with £1K is not going to break the bank but personally I'd be cautious about committing a large chunk of your cash savings without at least considering diversification in other investment classes.

It's easy to get seduced by double digit annual rates of return but the rates are high for good reason. There are significant risks involved and the legal fees and loan recovery costs could see platforms struggling to stay solvent imho should a substantial stress event occur.

mikesndbs

Hi, that does look like the kind of thing I am after.
Will check it out

Alpaca

I've been very happy with Saving Stream. Having invested through a number of different p2p platforms, my favourites (probably in this order) are:

1. Saving Stream - loans pay 12%, secured against property, simple to invest in new loans with their "pre-funding" system and the secondary market is fairly liquid meaning you can get your money out pretty easily. In addition to asset security, Saving Stream has a Provision fund so in the event of a default (of which they've had a total of two so far), they have funds to compensate investors if the asset sale doesn't cover investors' capital.
2. MoneyThing - loans pay 10-13%, secured against property, cars, jewellery and electronics, again a fairly liquid secondary market but new loans (particularly smaller ones) go quickly and picking up a slice sometimes depends on being online when the loan goes live.
3. Ratesetter - 3-6% depending on how long you tie your money up for, leant to individuals. In the "rolling market" you can get 3%+ and sell out to other investors at any point at no cost. The big benefit of Ratesetter is that you can lend your money out very quickly so it can be a good short term place to park money that you might want to use elsewhere later. Ratesetter also has a provision fund and no investor has lost a penny with them so far.

Another option that you may find interesting is Property Partner. It's not strictly p2p, but rather an easy way to invest in a diversified portfolio of residential property. Effectively they've structured it as a "stock exchange" for shares in residential property. This means it's easy to buy and sell shares and you can invest small amounts across lots of different properties. They pay 2-5% dividend and then you get capital growth (or decline) on top.

As part of looking to get better returns on savings/investments a big plus for Property Partner is that, due to the way they structure the investments, the rental income is classed as dividends so it's tax free up to £5,000 if you're not already using your annual dividend allowance. Likewise for capital gains, up to your £11,100 allowance. As there aren't many 2-5% tax free accounts out there, this makes it quite attractive in my view.