The Bounce Back government loan scheme continues to expand. Metro Bank is the latest to try to get money to small businesses. AltFi takes up the story. The high street bank will be able to offer SMEs loans from £2,000 up to £50,000 following its accreditation by the British Business Bank today. Metro Bank joins the ever-growing list of 17 […]
Ahead of the arrival of new offerings, especially suited to the locked-down environment (think music rights and streaming), we thought we’d offer one of our regular refreshers on how to lend to our carefully vetted borrowing companies. It is not a one-stage process. Investors who buy a fund or make a cash deposit into a […]
The new loan from Mar-Key Marquees Limited, rated A+ , is making good progress. It is 28 per cent bid at the time of writing. The company manufactures and rents out large marquee structures for events like the America’s Cup. The stock held by the company is of a high value as the posts for the […]
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 […]
The signals on funding for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are mixed. Every few weeks research is released that purports to show SMEs are waking up to the funding available outside the traditional banking mainstream. Then along comes data that seems to demonstrate the opposite. Below is an upbeat report published here just over a […]
Death and taxes may be the only certainties in life, but they offer another immutable truth: they always come at an inconvenient time. So, it’s pleasing and mildly surprising to discover that some of you are addressing both death and taxes at the same time. Our Inheritance Tax service is proving popular, with several enquiries […]
Loans from property-backed Seascape (currently we are offering number 22 in the series) continue to prove popular. The latest A-rated tranche yields 8 per cent gross, at a fixed rate for five years. After less than a day, the issue is 36 per cent subscribed. Bear in mind that while there is no profit without […]
Our determination to keep the crowd – individual investors – in crowdfunding is on the record. That does not preclude forming partnerships with bigger commercial lenders, but the individual will always have a place in peer-to-peer (P2P) lending. Our friends at P2P Finance News quote Orca Money’s Iain Niblock’s thoughts on the debate: While much […]
The alternative finance sector is growing fast. This is especially true of the financial technology (FinTech) sub-sector. With rapid growth comes rapid change – so much so that the language we use to describe our industry often struggles to keep up. We’ve often reported here on the need for an established taxonomy for alternative finance. […]
Recently, HM Treasury, the Department for International Trade, and Innovate Finance, joined together in publishing a report entitled “UK Fintech State of the Nation.” The report provides a snapshot perspective as to progress in the UK regarding FinTech, as well as providing a roster of ongoing programs created to ensure the UK’s position as a […]