The UK’s top financial watchdog, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), is quite rightly keeping a vigilant eye on new and fast-growing areas of finance. Above all, it is looking to safeguard the wellbeing of retail consumers of financial products 9roughly translated as investors and savers). It is also taking the simple and bold step of […]
Peer-to-peer (P2P) lending is a balancing act. On the one side, platforms like ours need to have active and engaged individual lenders who want a good return on their capital. On the other, it’s vital to find and vet the small businesses seeking capital very carefully (strong record of profitability, assets on which we can […]
Young industries have their teething problems. The alternative finance sector includes crowdfunding, and, within that, debt funding to small companies seeking funds to grow. The crowd – typically individuals seeking good returns on capital by lending to carefully vetted small businesses – can provide those funds. This activity has been called crowd lending by some, […]
News Alert: Bank Of England raises base rates to 0.5 per cent. Will it make a difference to income-dependent savers? We looked at this last week, in anticipation of the rise. We say: investors will still be left high and dry… The crowd must stay in crowdfunding. That’s the often-stated philosophy of this company – […]
The answer is out there. The latest HMTC statistics show that of the £585 billion Individual Savings Account (ISA) market, cash ISAs are one the wane – with a capital flight of some 40 per cent from cash to other investment classes. One of the best and most appropriate asset classes is the peer-to-peer (P2P) […]
There’s a kind of Holy Trinity to be considered by anyone thinking of making an investment in a peer-to-peer (P2P) loan. Lenders on this site have achieved an average gross yield of 8,6 per cent. But the yield, while attractive, is just one factor to assess – access and security are the others (as we […]
We’re all set to roll out a series of loans for inclusion in an Innovative Finance ISA (Individual Savings Account). The average gross yield achieved by Money&Co. lenders across some £10 million of loans facilitated since 2014 is 8.6 per cent (7.6 per cent, net of our 1 per cent charge). Other new loans, and […]
The new Individual Savings Account (ISA) season promises to be particularly frenetic. Like it or not, there is such a thing as a season (and we actually don’t like it – see this earlier article that points out the benefits of early investment, especially for high-yielding assets). The season is essentially a whirr of activity […]
Alternative finance – with peer-to-peer (P2P) loans at the forefront – is moving to the mainstream. This process will be accelerated as the Individual Savings Account season (this means, more or less, the last the months of the tax year, ending on 5th April). In this interview with our communications director, Nicola Horlick, CEO of […]
The UK economy grew faster than expected, at a rate of 0.4 per cent between July and September of this year. The key questions arising from this are what this means for base rates – and what this means for savings rates. The headline message, according to Money&Co. CEO, Nicola Horlick, is that potentially higher […]