Updates from now on will include actual numbers for each lender.
Today is the first post on my reset Peer to Peer Lending Portfolio. I spent June consolidating the portfolio and getting it ready for my new public Peer to Peer Lending blog. I have decided to publish everything here on this website, so you can see real returns. How they are earned and paid by Peer to Peer Lenders. You’ll also see how it works when defaults occur, and how quickly these companies recover funds, if at all. Everything I do with the lenders will be open and published on here.
I sold a bunch of loans and moved capital from many of the lenders I was using in the past. Then consolidated the capital in to some of the larger lenders I have used previously whom I trust. These lenders get the lions share of the portfolio now.
Also added a couple of new lenders that I have been researching. As with all my peer to peer investments, these lenders start out with a smaller share of the portfolio until I see how things go. And how I feel about placing more capital to them. Moving forward I will be adding more lenders and capital, as well as moving money around in order to try and get the best risk/reward ratios.
This is where the P2P Portfolio stands as of the 1st of July 2018.
Current Peer to Peer Investments.
As you can see, everything is rounded up quite nicely, with percentages of the portfolio based on my risk/reward ratios. Plus there is a factor of how quickly I can get money out to move to other opportunities if I need to. As well as if there are any points I will need to pay in order to sell loans and move it.
As we move forward, I will publish updates here at least once per month so you can see how the portfolio is doing in real time.
Lender & Loan Account Distribution.
Below I outline which individual lender accounts I placed the portfolio in, how much in each, and reasons why.
Assetz Capital
With Assetz I decided to go 5k in to the PSA (Property Secured Account) and the rest in to the GBBA (Great British Business Account). Previously I had kept most of the money in the QAA (Quick Access Account) because I was a new investor with them and I wanted to see how things went. Now I’m comfortable with them, I’m happy to go for longer term loans in order to gain a better rate of return. I went with auto-invest instead of the manual lending because of the provision funds in these accounts and the low level of maintenance they require.
Funding Circle
I have a lot of faith in Funding Circle so I decided to go with their Balanced Portfolio option paying between 6% – 7%. It seemed like the best option and again, I know Funding Circle and I trust their return estimates and their security, even though they have no provision fund.
Growth Street
Growth Street only have one account option so not much choice there. Their short term (30 day) loans pay 5.3% but I can get the money out in maximum 30 days so I put a good chunk of capital there. As I make acquaintance with new lenders, I may move some of this for higher returns in the future.
Kuflink
Kuflink is a new lender to me, however I’ve heard good things about them so I decided to give them a try. I only put £500 with them to start, just to see how things go. There was also an added benefit that they were offering £100 cash back for a 500 investment in an auto-invest account after 30 days. So I put it in the 12 month account which is paying 3.99%. I want to try the select-invest with these guys as I like their “skin in the game” feature where they invest 20% in loans on a first loss basis. I’ll move more money there as I get to know them and try the other investment options.
Landbay
I decided to put 10k with Landbay. I know them quite well and they are one of the safest options out there because of their property backed mortgages and low LTV’s (loan to values). Their rates are kind of low though because of this (less risk = less reward), so I put half of the money in their Tracker account so I can get it out without penalty if I decide to move it to a higher paying lender.
Lending Crowd
Lending Crowd is a new’ish lender to me but they are very well thought of in the P2P crowd so I put 5.5k with them. I went with the extra 500 because in order to get £100 cash back I needed to lend over 5k. 🙂 I’m only interested in using the self-select account with Lending Crowd as the rates are much higher. And they allow you to bid on loans to get a better rate. I hope I can get the funds invested in a timely manner. I just started looking at the secondary market to see if I can pick some up from there.
Lending Works
Lending Works was an easy choice. I know them well and I just left the 30k I already had in their in the 5 year 6% account. I just moved out some extra I had in there to round out the amount for the new portfolio.
Mintos
Mintos is a relativity new lender to me. I had 500 with them already. I feel comfortable now increasing that another 5k to make a total of 5.5k in GBP. Most of the loans available in GBP with Mintos are Mogo car loans with buyback guarantees at around 9.5%. I don’t have any euros with them yet but I would like to get some euros in there eventually. Mostly to take advantage of their huge loan book. I’m waiting for the euro to come down in exchange rate to GBP and USD to change some money. I think that in the next few months the euro will come down a lot.
RateSetter
I already had money in RateSetter’s Rolling Market account. So I rounded it out to 30k and put an order in to buy at a 5.4%. This was a little above the market rate which was 5.1%. The order got filled in a couple of days so I’m in their 5 year account at 5.4%
Unbolted
Unbolted is a brand new lender to me but I read good things about them. I originally placed 2.5k with them at the beginning of June. Unfortunately by the last few days of June only about £400 of that had been lent out. So I decided to move the other 2k to another lender where I could get invested faster. I left a total of £500 with Kuflink lending to all 3 loan types. We’ll see how it goes with them, maybe I’ll move a bit more money to them at a later date.
Zopa
I’ve known Zopa for a long time so I already had money in their Core Account. It was just rounded off to 10k. I probably won’t put any more in to Zopa right now as I think there are better options out there. I won’t move what is already in there though as I don’t want to pay the exit fee on it.
Summary
So this is where we start with the new Peer to Peer Portfolio. Updates will be posted every month on the income, and how each investment is doing. I’ll also be adding capital to different lenders and moving money between them as I figure out which are the best.
