Peer-to-peer lending sites: MSE guide discussion

Somerset_La_La_La wrote: »

Luckily I'm in P2P more for income generation (little of it mind!) than for saving my deposit. As soon as this defaulted (added to Plymouth which I was also in @ £1k ish) I promptly sold off the rest and moved it to Growthstreet. Half the return but a lot lower risk it seems!

The problem is appearances can be deceptive. I hold a few loans secured on business assets (as a diversifier), even though my most significant loss to date (100%) was in one such loan in which the business assets in question were secretly sold just prior to the loan expiring. So I do prefer loans in which the primary security is not something that can be spirited away, or if it can, it is physically secured out of reach of the borrower for the duration of the loan.

Only time will tell whether loans offered by some platforms are actually safer than loans offered by others - it takes time for big failures to materialise.

I'm hoping Plymouth can be sold off soon (academic year 2018/19 starting!), even if I can get 70% back on that to use towards my deposit it'd be helpful!

I'm optimistic about the outlook for Plymouth, much moreso than Bollington and Birkenhead. What has become clear across all platforms offering these types of development loans is that the methodology of starting from a GDV and subtracting remaining build costs in order to arrive at a present value is flawed and it is not appropriate to lend more than about 30% of towards the build costs of such a project, with the balance coming out of the developer's pockets.

A poster on the purple P2P forum has produced a very interesting post regarding the possible implications on various platforms regarding the FCA consolation document (https://www.fca.org.uk/publication/consultation/cp18-20.pdf)





https://p2pfrankdiscussion.freeforums.net/post/2911/thread

Alexland wrote: »

Just noticed, for a few days only, Kuflink are offering 3% cashback to existing customers on their Autoinvest and IFISA products if locking in at 5%+ on their 3 or 5 year rates.

I've just signed up through a friend referral link...do you think the 3% cashback would apply on top of that, or is it one or the other? It doesn't seem clear from the terms.

bxboards wrote: »

The 3 year deal seems like the best one, given 5 year is only 0.35% more.

Agree it"s like an extra 1% interest on the 3 year deal which makes it comparable to the 5 year deal with the same cashback spread over 2 more years. My current priority is ISA wrapping money and my IFISA for this tax year is with Ratesetter so I will probably give this a miss.

Alex

I am new to P2P lending and have recently opened an account with Ratesetter with the intention of investing in the rolling market.

I'm surprised at how low the rates are....over the last week, they have fluctuated between 2% and 3.5%. Is that the current average as I can't find any historical data? Just looking to hear from more experienced investors at what kind of rate you have been able to obtain?
The 1 year fixed is 4% so am wondering whether to go for that instead.
Any views gratefully received.