Has the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) done the peer-to-peer (P2P) sector a favour? The argument runs that the FCA has added scarcity value, and a kind of financial forbidden-fruit glamour, to the P2P sector by proposals that would limit investors’ exposure to P2P assets to 10 per cent of investors’ invested wealth. Our friends at […]
AltFi has taken the lead in research of the peer-to-peer (P2P) market across Europe. Below, we reprise a couple of salient points from AltFi’s own analysis of the data it garnered. The full article, well worth a read, can be found here. Fat margins get thinner for investors Investors in a diversified peer-to-peer lending portfolio […]
Peer-to-peer (P2P) lending can be a lucrative activity. The average yield achieved by our registered lenders over more than five years of loan facilitation on this platform is more than 8 per cent, before we deduct our one per cent charge. That return has handsomely outperformed retail price inflation, which has averaged around two per […]
The peer-to-peer lending market is now funding more than £9 billion of loans across Europe each year with two thirds (67 per cent) of this funding coming through UK platforms, according to a report from our friends at AltFi – an excerpt of the report and details of how to download the underlying research is […]
Moves are afoot to make what’s sometimes dubbed the UK’s “most hated” tax a little easier to avoid. If you give away assets and then survive seven years, the gift becomes free of Inheritance Tax (IHT). If the donor dies before seven years, the gift is partially exempt, depending on the length of the period […]
It is later than you think. This old adage, often found on timepieces, has rarely felt truer than in the world of Inheritance Tax planning. Here’s the scenario: Boris Johnson become Prime Minister, fails to fight of the inevitable vote of no confidence, calls a General Election and loses to Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour. All this […]
Steady as she goes… The peer-to-peer (P2P) sub-sector of alternative finance has suffered some reverses recently. We offer an excerpt from the latest news report from our friends at AltFi, involving a UK fund investing in a troubled French venture, below. Our take on all this is simple: improperly managed risky ventures will fail (and […]
Funding Circle, the biggest player in the UK P2P sector, has announced more bad news, which has been badly received by the market. Its shares are 73 per cent off from the IPO price at the time of writing. The news has caused some to question the validity of the entire peer-to-peer (P2P) business model. […]
Peer-to-peer (P2P) lending is a young and fast-expanding sector embedded within the wider alternative finance sector. It is, then, something of a surprise that the ‘average’ user is predominantly older (over 60 in the case of many platforms from what we hear in the industry) and male. The theory is that in the prevailing […]