Monthly Archives: August 2020

Covid-19 Crisis, IFISAs, And The Road Ahead For Direct Lending

Money&Co. CEO Nicola Horlick has pointed to a substantial drop in Innovative Finance ISA (IFISA) inflows this years. She argues the Covid-19 crisis is a major contributor factor to the downturn. Nicola spoke to our friends at P2P Finance News, and we offer their accurate report of a recent interview as a reprise of Nicola’s […]

Business Future Still Uncertain – Initiatives And ‘Oven-Ready’ Deals Notwithstanding

As the UK heads towards the European Union exit door, a number of government initiatives to facilitate trade appear. Without a high-level trade deal – the one that was supposed to be “oven-ready” would be just fine – one wonders how useful these initiatives will prove to be. The Fintech Times reports the latest: Department […]

Covid, ISAs And The Asset-Backed Lending Future

The Evening Standard reports on recent annual figures published by Money&Co. Fund manager Nicola Horlick’s lending platform Money&Co lost £400,000 in the last financial year as potential investors ducked taking out its ISAs amid the Covid crisis. Horlick, once dubbed the “City Superwoman”, set up Money&Co and its holding company Denmark Square in 2013 as […]

Direct Lender Pushes SMEs Towards Government Loan Scheme

Small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) borrowers have been urged to apply for government-backed emergency loan schemes through the biggest player in the UK’s  direct-lending market, Funding Circle, before the schemes end. Our friends at P2P Finance News report: The peer-to-peer lending platform, which has received accreditation for both the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme (CBILS) […]

Leading Direct Lender Pivots To Focus On Fixed-Term Savings

Times are changing. Regular readers of this News section will know our consistent interest in the relationship between mainstream finance and the FinTech sub-sector of alternative finance. Early mainstream acquisitions of altfi assets were often disastrous, and both sectors are finding a way of getting closer to one another. The latest comes from a founding […]

FinTech’s Direct Lenders Head For Property Backing

Regular visitors to this site will be aware of our vision for the direct-lending sub-sector of FinTech. Property-backed and niche, asset-backed lending (eg, against music rights) is the way forward. Our friends at UKTech News report an interesting deal that ticks one of our preferred boxes: Offr, the prop-tech platform digitising the buying, selling and leasing […]

FinTech SMEs: Covid-Cashflow Latest

The Covid cashflow mini-crisis for SMEs is being reported, albeit in a piecemeal way. Our friends at UKTech News bring us the latest on SME cash flow issues, as researched by the news outlet and Lloyds Commercial banking: Joint research conducted by Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking and UK Tech News has delved into how the […]

The Benefits Of Vitamin D (Where D Is For Investment Diversification)

Our friends at P2P Finance News run a nicely written piece of advertorial, aimed at persuading the reader of the benefits of diversification, or spreading risks in investment. We carry an excerpt from the piece, because it makes good sense – you can decide whether you want to buy the book it’s plugging for yourself. […]