October 2019 P2P Lending Platform News Round-up

Lent to Date: £895,200,000 – £8.2 million (0.92%) since the last blog.

When this blog was compiled, there were 96 loans in the pipeline with 0 imminently due to be drawndown.

Highlighted Loans: Borrower in Scotland recently raised a total of <£650k across 2 loans as they refinanced bridging loans on 2 convenience stores and one commercial property that they intend to convert into a café. The loan was for 5 years and will be covered by rental income. The plan is to refinance to cheaper borrowing at the end of that period with a proportion of the capital having been paid off via this loan. Investors were offered a return of 6% pa.

Managed Accounts: The following accounts automatically distribute funds on behalf of investors across different sections of the platform’s portfolio and are covered by a discretionary Provision Fund (the target rates of return are in brackets):

Quick Access Account (4.1% pa)

30 Day Access Account (5.1% pa)

90 Day Access Account (5.75% pa)

Property Secured Investment Account (5.5% pa)

Great British Business Account version 2 (6.25% pa)

Platform News: Following a number of loans for Wind Turbines which have gone bad, Assetz Capital have agreed to refund those who manually invested (ie those not protected by the site’s Provision Fund) the full amount of capital plus 2% pa of interest – equivalent to what would have been earnt in a bank account. The payments will come from the Provision Fund although this won’t cause it to reduce below the level it was at in March 2019 which is advertised on their website. As one of the affected investors, this seems to be a very generous gesture to me.