Has anyone invested money into the likes of Ratesetter or Zopa?

[Jon]

I'm interested in finding out how people found the experience and how easy it is it to withdraw your money from these peer-to-peer companies?

I assume you make more money than if you dump it into a regular savings account which is why people are using them...

 

[mikecmr]

i was in the funding circle and the returns were no-where near what they advertised I think over a year I was 150 up but that included a refer a friend bonus this is on a 2k investment with the amount of bad debts I pulled out and put it into a managed fund less risky in my eyes

 

[Jon]

i was in the funding circle and the returns were no-where near what they advertised I think over a year I was 150 up but that included a refer a friend bonus this is on a 2k investment with the amount of bad debts I pulled out and put it into a managed fund less risky in my eyes

Can you explain this bad debts thing to me??

 

[mikecmr]

at the time funding circle was slightly different you bought loan parts ie 1% of the the £1000 loan that a business takes out, if the loan goes bad and the people cannot pay the money back it goes down as a bad debt, I had 6 in one day a lot of them were property investments

I believe its changed now but there is the risk that the loans that they have given out all default so you lose your money and I don't believe its covered under the fsa guarantee

might look at it again see if its changed some at the time It was advertised at 15% return but it was very high risk I believe the green site has a good page about the pros and cons on investing (its not saving its investing)

 

[Cas]

Rate setter is pretty easy to use for me. But I don't have the munch invested in there, been using moneyting.

once the loan is finished, withdrawing takes about a day

 

[Jon]

at the time funding circle was slightly different you bought loan parts ie 1% of the the £1000 loan that a business takes out, if the loan goes bad and the people cannot pay the money back it goes down as a bad debt, I had 6 in one day a lot of them were property investments

I believe its changed now but there is the risk that the loans that they have given out all default so you lose your money and I don't believe its covered under the fsa guarantee

might look at it again see if its changed some at the time It was advertised at 15% return but it was very high risk I believe the green site has a good page about the pros and cons on investing (its not saving its investing)

OK that all sounds slightly more risky than i was hoping for lol

 

[mikecmr]

By the looks ratesetter is more of a savings account where you get a flat 5% so bad debts are accounted for and at the moment if you invest 1k you get £100 so 10% for the first year, think im going to give it a go

 

[Jon]

By the looks ratesetter is more of a savings account where you get a flat 5% so bad debts are accounted for and at the moment if you invest 1k you get £100 so 10% for the first year, think im going to give it a go

Yeah that was a deal I thinking about with dumping £1000 into it (maybe £1500)

 

[Queen Jess]

OK that all sounds slightly more risky than i was hoping for lol

They changed a bit and now they spread your money over a number of different loans (min £20 per loan) so your risk of default is a bit lower.

I put £250 in as an experiment last year (wasn't willing to lose anymore than that!) in the higher risk portfolio (there is a lower risk one too). I seem to be getting a return of 9.26%, although I have been lucky and not had any bad debts.

I have a feeling it is annoying to take your money out as you have to wait for someone to buy you out or each loan to finish, but haven't checked.