UK

RateSetter Becomes First Major Marketplace Lender to Offer ‘Easy Access’

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‘Easy access’ investment will be available in a RateSetter ISA

RateSetter has improved customers’ access to their money by removing all early exit fees from its monthly investment market. This means that RateSetter’s 33,000 investors can now benefit from great rates of return combined with easy access to their money.

RateSetter’s monthly market has proven very popular with investors, delivering an average rate of 3.1% p.a. over the last five years. The latest rate can be found here.

As with all marketplace lending, the speed of access to money is dependent on liquidity. RateSetter has managed market liquidity for over five years, the result being that no investor has ever had to wait to withdraw their money from RateSetter. Early withdrawal fees remain in place for RateSetter’s one year, three year and five year investments.  More information can be found here.  RateSetter is looking at options to simplify the way fees are calculated to provide greater certainty to investors.

The announcement comes less than two months before the launch date for the Innovative Finance ISA (IF ISA) on 6 April and follows the release of information on RateSetter’s forthcoming IF ISA over a week ago.  RateSetter has confirmed that customers will be able to invest in any of its markets within an IF ISA wrapper, and thus can benefit from easy access investments with tax-free returns. Continue reading →

Interview: Commuterclub Pitches to Raise 650K from the Crowd

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CommuterClub is a promising startup currently running a pitch to raise their 2nd round from the crowd. I really like their business model and have invested in both rounds.

Interview with Petko Plachkov, CEO and Founder

What is Commuter Club about?

CommuterClub delivers a new and innovative way to access public transport as a subscription service.

By bringing together a low cost loan with the existing annual ticket, CommuterClub can deliver the savings of an annual, in a far more convenient and attractive package as a monthly payment plan.

Our goal is to continue to bring new innovative products for commuters, delivering value for money and ease of use.

I really like the fact that your business model builds on long customer relationships. What do you do to achieve high customer satisfaction?

CommuterClub operates in a sector dominated by large slow moving monopolies who manage public transportation. Our proposition is to offer an alternative approach to commuters that begins with their needs. Our focus on a simple customer journey, great customer service and a simple product all deliver a fantastic outcome for consumers.

This is key in ensuring high customer satisfaction and providing a real alternative to the existing ticketing options.

The audience of this blog is highly interested in p2p lending. Can you please explain how your company ties into this industry and what role Ratesetter and potentially Zopa play for your financing?

CommuterClub works with RateSetter to fund all loans. As a business P2P was the key building block enabling us to deliver a low cost and flexible product to consumers, something that we would have found exceedingly difficult if we worked with incumbent banks.

We expect to continue to work with p2p going forward and to maintain our close relationship with RateSetter.

The pitch video

The timing of this round is a bit of a surprise to me since you indicated to shareholders recently ‘at our current trajectory we expect to be [able to] sustain growth from retained earnings’. Why did you decide to raise further capital now?

CommuterClub has made tremendous progress in diversifying the business expanding nationally in the UK, launching a B2B solution and also looking to cover other verticals like parking.

This expansion of our product set has also expanded our target market and we are now raising capital to fund our continued expansion and growth.

Name one fact that makes your pitch a better investment than any other pitch on Seedrs.

Real, proven traction backed by millions in loans and thousands of happy customers.

P2P-Banking.com thanks Petko Plachkov for the interview.

This article is not an investment advice. Investing in startups bears significant risks, including total loss of investment.

 

International P2P Lending Loan Volumes January 2016

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The following table lists the loan originations for January. This month Ratesetter led, followed by Zopa and Funding Circle. I added one more marketplace to the list. I do monitor development of p2p lending statistics for many markets. Since I already have most of the data on file I can publish statistics on the monthly loan originations for selected p2p lending services.
Investors living in markets with no or limited choice of local p2p lending services can check this list of marketplaces open to international investors. Investors can also learn how to make use of p2p lending cashback offers available.
Last month these companies crossed significant milestones:
Marketplace Lending Statistics 01/2016
Table: P2P Lending Volumes in January 2016. Source: own research
Note that volumes have been converted from local currency to Euro for the sake of comparison. Some figures are estimates/approximations.
*Prosper and Lending Club no longer publish origination data for the most recent month.
Notice to p2p lending services not listed: Continue reading →

Unbolted Partners with H&H Classics

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Unbolted logoBritish p2p lending marketplace Unbolted has announced a partnership with car auctioneer H&H Classics. The finance deal will allow auction consignors to access a significant portion of the value of their car or motorcycle well in advance of sale. The supply agreement creates a sale advance facility providing up to 70% of the low-estimate valuation to the consignor where an agreement is struck.

Unbolted lets individuals plus small and medium enterprises borrow against their assets.

The two partners in the project are also developing a new financing solution for buyers to help them capitalise on new opportunities at auction.

Nick Delaney, Business Development Manager of H&H Classics, says: ‘Both types of facility are safe and reliable methods designed to bring liquidity to asset-rich collectors and entrepreneurs, allowing them to move quickly on opportunities rather than missing the boat while negotiating cumbersome and costly credit facilities with banks.’

Continue reading →

Investly Launches Invoice Finance for UK SMEs; Raised 600K from Speedinvest

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Tallinn based p2p lending marketplace Investly, which recently launched an invoice finance product in Estonia announced the launch of the service for UK SMEs. The invoice finance option will give UK businesses almost instant access to much needed working capital to aid growth.

The launch comes after a successful European launch of the platform in Estonia 18 months ago, and a subsequent investment of 600,000 Euro from Venture Capital group, SpeedInvest.

Until now, invoice finance options – whether through traditional channels or via other peer-to-peer platforms – have been complex and laden with fees and charges.

Investly says it has simplified the product so that, once credit checks have been cleared, SMEs can sell invoices to investors within two days. And therefore assign the money to aid growth, enabling them to be the best they can possibly be without the cash flow worries. Initially, the invoice finance product will be available to any UK SME who passes the platforms sign-up criteria, which includes credit checks and confirming their identity. Further safeguards are put in place such as directors’ checks and potential guarantee.

Ruth Chamberlain, Investly’s UK Country Manager, said: “Long payment terms are crippling for UK SMEs. They are dependent on cash to sustain and grow their business, but as they invest in products and people, they may not get money on work completed a month or even 120 days after issuing their invoice. This is putting many businesses at risk – especially smaller ones and those that depend on payments from one or two key customers.” Continue reading →

Saving Stream – My Loan Portfolio after Year One

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I started investing at the UK p2p lending marketplace Saving Stream in December 2014. The last Saving Stream review I wrote was 9 months ago, therefore time is right to post an update on how my portfolio is developing.

For those p2p lending newbies that have not heard of Saving Stream so far here are the basics again:

  • Bridge loans, secured by commercial properties (first or second charges)
  • 12% interest (interest rate is the same on all loans on the platform)
  • 0% fees for investors (on primary and secondary market)
  • All loans prefunded; investors earn interest from the day they invest money into a loan
  • A provision fund shall provide a buffer against default losses
  • Open to international investors

To deposit money I used Transferwise and Currencyfair saving me bank fees and allowing me to know the currency exchange rate in advance.

I made 5 deposits over time totalling 5,441 GBP (7,403 EUR).

Saving Stream Loans
Screenshot: Top of the list of my Savingstream loan portfolio

My portfolio grew nicely and yields a very got ROI

As you can see in the image, my original 5,441 GBP grew to 5,967 GBP current portfolio value. I reinvested all repayments and interest earned. It sure is nice to earn 60 GBP interest per month (1% of live loan parts amount). My ROI is actually a bit over 12% so far as I profited from several cashback offers. I did not experience any defaults on my loans so far.

The new website

Late in 2015 Saving Stream overhauled the website. Major improvement is that this fixes the situation which frequently occured on the old website, where loan parts sold/bought on the secondary market might get stuck when a loan amount left on offer accidently ran into a negative value and needed manual operator intervention to clear. The new website also introduced the two step verification security option. I enabled this security feature for my account. Continue reading →