ratesetter

Ratesetter Launches IFISA Offer

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Ratesetter announced it will launch the IFISA product offer tomorrow. The Ratesetter ISA will initially be available to existing customers, then to new customers on 1 March and to inward transfers from other ISAs in April.

Key features of the Ratesetter ISA:

  • Average interest rates are 3% to 6% p.a. depending on level of access.
  • Ratesetter says it takes less than five minutes to open a Ratesetter account online.
  • All investors are automatically covered by Ratesetter’s Provision Fund which manages and diversifies risk, meaning investors do not need to choose specific loans. The Provision Fund has ensured that, to date, every individual Ratesetter investor has received their capital and interest in full. Lending on Ratesetter is an investment and capital is at risk.
  • The Ratesetter ISA is a flexible ISA. Investors can withdraw money and replace it later in the same tax year without losing their tax-free allowance.

Ratesetter’s CEO and founder, Rhydian Lewis OBE, told P2P-Banking:

‘RateSetter’s purpose is to give people the opportunity to earn more on their money. Our ISA makes that opportunity even more compelling because investing is now tax-free.

 Cash ISA savers are frustrated with low interest rates, while inflation is always nibbling away at their money. Stocks & Shares ISA investors have enjoyed good returns recently but may be nervous of market falls, as demonstrated in the last few days. Lending is a third asset class in the middle, offering the potential for higher returns than cash without the volatility of shares.

 With RateSetter’s excellent track record and our focus on the retail investor, we believe our ISA will become an attractive home for people looking to put their money to work.’

For more Innovative Finance ISA products see the large P2P-Banking IFISA comparison table.

Plum Automates Investment in Ratesetter – Plum Equity Crowdfunding Pitch

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Plum is another fintech that makes use of Ratesetter’s products through a cooperation. Plum is bot on Facebook messenger designed to automate savings for the user and to invest money on his behalf. Savings can currently be invested in Ratesetters rolling market. Plum is currently pitching to raise 700K GBP through a convertible with a valuation cap of 5M GBP on Seedrs. Watch the video for more information on the Plum product and pitch. The minimum investment for this equity crowdfunding campaign is 10 GBP. The pitch is EIS eligible (UK residents). Other investors include 200K US$ invested by VC 500 Startups. This pitch is not yet officially launched on Seedrs, but already open for investments. You can use P2P-Banking’s free notification service to be alerted of upcoming Seedrs pitches early and review them ahead of the crowd.

Competitors of Plum include Digit, Qapital, Clarity, Albert, Squirrel, Cleo and Savedroid.

The Plum pitch deck is  informative reading. To request that, login, click on ‘Documents’ in the pitch, and send a message to request the pitch deck.

Another example of an innovative cooperative cooperation making use of products of a p2p lending service is Commuterclub.

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

Ratesetter Reports Rising Revenue & Pre-Tax Loss

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Peer-to-peer lending platform RateSetter has published its 2015-16 accounts, showing that it increased revenues from 12.6M to 18.5M GBP over the year. The company made a pre-tax loss of 4.9M GBP, compared to a pre-tax profit of 476K GBP for the preceding year. The company’s results are in line with expectations set out at the start of the year and reflect the decision to charge more fees over the lifetime of loans rather than upfront and a planned increase in investment back into the business.

Loans under management increased by 70 per cent, from 341M GBP on 31 March 2015, to 581M a year later, while the number of active investors grew from 18,608 to 31,036 over the same period. Today these figures stand at 640M GBP and 36,310 respectively – with a 70 per cent increase in new active investors in the period since the EU referendum compared to the same three months last year.

RateSetter made a profit for the years ending 31 March 2014 and 2015.

One of the main investment considerations for the money raised in 2015 from a consortium of investors including Woodford and Artemis was to alter the timing of receiving income: in 2015 RateSetter started to charge a greater proportion of its fees over the lifetime of loans rather than purely up front when loans are written. This creates a more sustainable recurring income stream as more money comes in over the term of loans, reducing pressure to lend in order to generate revenue when credit conditions are poor. Importantly, it also aligns RateSetter’s interests with those of its investors as it provides a financial incentive to only approve loans which perform. If all fees had been taken upfront when loans were written, rather than charged over the lifetime of loans, RateSetter would have recorded a pre-tax profit in 2015-16. Continue reading →

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.

 

Ratesetter Updates Legal Structure of the Provision Fund

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RatesetterRatesetter informed its investors that it will update the legal structure of the provision fund by changing it from a trust to a limited company. Ratesetter was the first UK p2p lending marketplace to introduce a fund to protect investors against defaults (up to the amount available in the fund). So far no retail investor has lost a penny on Ratesetter since the launch in 2010.

Excerpt from the announcement: Continue reading →