P2p

bigadaj

masonic wrote: »

New investors would do well to spend most of their time purchasing on the secondary market initially. That's the way to quickly diversify across loans.

Though if they choose to do so being very careful about what they pick up.

One rule of thumb some people follow is dropping any loans with less than 90 gays or so to term as the potential for a default increases.

It's also obviously possible to buy defaulted loans which is a hazard a newbie investor may not recognise.

veryintrigued

bigadaj wrote: »

....is dropping any loans with less than 90 gays or so.....

That seems a very unique way to filter risk.

masonic

bigadaj wrote: »

Though if they choose to do so being very careful about what they pick up.

One rule of thumb some people follow is dropping any loans with less than 90 gays or so to term as the potential for a default increases.

It's also obviously possible to buy defaulted loans which is a hazard a newbie investor may not recognise.

Yes, best to steer clear completely given the volume of loans where interest is not being serviced by the borrower. Much better choices exist for newbies, such as MoneyThing (although there is not much available there at the moment).

Carmk2008

TheShape wrote: »

You can pay £300 pm into a First Direct Regular Saver @ 5% interest fully protected by the FSCS. If you're thinking of saving/investing a greater amount each month I would question why you are not maximising an account with a guaranteed rate of return with guaranteed return of capital (assuming you have less than £85k with the HSBC Banking group (if you have, why only £80pm into the regular saver?).

Can you pay more into your works pension, will your employer match the additional contributions? Are you a higher rate taxpayer who would benefit from the tax relief on pension contributions?

Have you got savings/an emergency fund equivalent to at least 3-6 mths outgoings (perhaps more as you have a BTL)? If you have, you could probably already be making greater use of your First Direct regular saver.

If you do not already have the emergency fund and are using guaranteed interest/capital protected savings options I would not be recommending putting money into p2p. I say this as someone who has been investing in p2p platforms, albeit only for about a month so far.

I know I can put £300 in pm but I don't have it the moment as we are in the middle of a refurb at the moment, this was merely to test the water and to diversify a bit and hopefully get a better return than what first direct returns. As for the pension I am nearly 40 and only started paying into one when the government launched the work place one, I suppose I could pay more as it's free money.

bigadaj

veryintrigued wrote: »

That seems a very unique way to filter risk.

I'm not totally sure but believe it's something to do with volatility of the pink pound.

ozaz

bigadaj wrote: »

It's also obviously possible to buy defaulted loans which is a hazard a newbie investor may not recognise.

By this do you mean it's possible to buy loans that have not been paid but fall within Saving Stream's tolerance period (180 days past initial due date) which Saving Stream does not yet formally class as defaulted?

As far as I can tell, once Saving Stream formally classes a loan as defaulted it's no longer possible to buy it.

Edit - My mistake. Forgot there was a Default loans section. At least they're not shown in the available loans section I suppose.

Biggles

novice_1 wrote: »

I meant on the primary market, min pre-bid is £100. You are right on the secondary market.

No, the only limit (AFAIK) is on pre-funding pipeline loans. There's no limit on any live loan, primary or secondary.

elephantrosie

ozaz wrote: »

I invest across 5 P2P lenders (Zopa, Ratesetter, Funding Circle, Assetz Capital, Saving Stream). I'm not sure what the minimum investment terms are for all of them but at least one of them (Assetz Capital) has a minimum investment amount of only £1.

I found these web pages and websites helpful when first looking into P2P

General Intros
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/peer-to-peer-lending
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/personal-banking/savings/peer-to-peer-lending-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-leadi/

In-depth reviews of several lenders
http://www.financialthing.com/

Who offers IFISAs?
https://p2pblog.co.uk/innovative-finance-isa/

Who offers cashback bonus on signup?
(there are also MSE forum threads with willing referrers)
https://p2pblog.co.uk/p2p-cashback-offers/

Thanks. read a few of the links and were really helpful.