Author Archives: Martin Baker

Funds Will Become Fundamental to P2P Space

Harriet Green is becoming a leading writer on crowdfunding in the UK. She hosted a session of Money&Co.’s May conference, Discovering the Power of the Crowd, and made telling contributions on the panel at the October Alternative Finance: New Solutions to Old Problems, co-sponosred by Money&Co. and Cubism law. See the hour-long panel discussion – […]

Banks, Savings And P2P – The Old,The New And The Future

Today, in anticipation of the latest new loan offering (coming to this site very soon) we offer excerpts two articles from today’s media output. It is an exercise in comparison and contrast. The Old “Since the September announcement that National Savings & Investments (NS&I) would be dropping its Direct Isa rate to just 1.25pc, few […]

The Secrets Of Start-Up Success

Thanks to our friends at This Is Money, the online arm of the Mail newspapers, for this article on the wit and wisdom (well, we would say that wouldn’t we?) of our CEO, Nicola Horlick. “In the first of our Start-Up Secrets series, multi-talented entrepreneur and investment veteran Nicola Horlick reveals who inspired her the […]

Northern SMEs Get To Crowdfunding Business Over Breakfast

Money&Co. went north last week. And a very enjoyable and worthwhile trip it was too. Pictured at a business breakfast attended by over 100 people are (from left to right) CEO of Manchester City Council, Sir Howard Bernstein, local businessman and event host, Steve Bennett of Transition Plus, and Money&Co. CEO Nicola Horlick. They are […]

SME Alternative Funding Ignorance ‘Creates £20 Billion Economic Hole’

Greetings from Manchester, where Money&Co. has been making its presence felt at a dinner and subsequent breakfast attended by 100 entrepreneurs and small-business owners. Both events were convivial and useful. Money&Co. CEO, Nicola Horlick spoke at each meeting: “There’s a real desire to do business and to get funding to do business in Manchester and […]

Debt Vs Equity For SMEs Explored And Explained

SME Insider is almost always an engaging read. This week it carries a mini-profile of small-business owner Oliver Southern, a London-based entrepreneur who started his career at one of the world’s biggest technology companies. Oliver is the force behind Chored, an app for house shares. “It lets users split and pay bills (including rent and […]

P2P Risk Assessment – Big Brother, Or Just Better Data?

How do you assess risk? Without reliable information, known in industry jargon as good data sets, the task is hopeless. There’s a growing trend in crowdfunding to look at information that is other than financial, partly as a predictor of borrower behaviour. Focusing on data other than the financial is obviously helpful in providing a […]

P2P Funds – AltFi, Moneyweek Report

Our friends at Money Week and Alt Fi  are running a series on mutual funds invested in peer-to-peer (P2P) loans. This is the first, and deals with performance, mandates, discount/surplus to NAV in some detail.    “Using numbers from investment trust analysts at Numis, we can clearly see from the various detailed tables below that […]

UK P2P Crowd Gets Ahead Of American Cousins

The UK generated nearly $2.3 billion in peer-to-peer (P2P) loans in 2014, making its alternative lending market the largest in the world on a per capita basis,” report’s India’s financial news platform, Business Insider: “To illustrate, 72 per cent more lending volume is transacted in the UK than in the US per person.” The report […]

Olderpreneurs Find Pension Route To Alternative Business Funding

Nicola Horlick, CEO of Money&Co, and non-executive director director of Clifton Asset Management, “has given some great advice to the over 50’s who are thinking about accessing their pension to delve into the start-up world, reports SME Insider. ‘‘’As you need an accrued pension of more than £50,000 to make the Pension-led funding process viable, […]