Saving Stream peer to peer lending review.

Peer to peer lending with Saving Stream

After around 3-4 months of investing my money into Ratesetter  I was already beginning to wonder what else was out there, was there better returns to be made on different peer to peer lending platforms? It was not long until I had stumbled upon one such platform which goes by the name of Saving Stream.

The interest rate paid to investors on Saving Stream was a real eye opener to me, being quite new to the game. At 12% per annum paid at 1% per month I was salivating at the prospect of the huge returns that could be made through the process of compound interest. I mean come on
12%, let us do a little maths! Let us say that we start with a £1000 initial investment to which we add £200 per month for 5 years. At the end of the 5 years we would have a balance of £18,313.97 whilst we only invested a total of £13,000 as shown below.

Year	Year Deposits	Year Interest	Total Deposits	Total Interest	Balance
1	£2,400.00	£288.69	£3,400.00	£288.69	£3,688.69
2	£2,400.00	£629.68	£5,800.00	£918.37	£6,718.37
3	£2,400.00	£1,013.92	£8,200.00	£1,932.30	£10,132.30
4	£2,400.00	£1,446.89	£10,600.00	£3,379.19	£13,979.19
5	£2,400.00	£1,934.78	£13,000.00	£5,313.97	£18,313.97

Now lets say that we continued this for 15 years, just so we can see that compounding magic in action!

Year	Year Deposits	Year Interest	Total Deposits	Total Interest	Balance
1	£2,400.00	£288.69	£3,400.00	£288.69	£3,688.69
2	£2,400.00	£629.68	£5,800.00	£918.37	£6,718.37
3	£2,400.00	£1,013.92	£8,200.00	£1,932.30	£10,132.30
4	£2,400.00	£1,446.89	£10,600.00	£3,379.19	£13,979.19
5	£2,400.00	£1,934.78	£13,000.00	£5,313.97	£18,313.97
6	£2,400.00	£2,484.54	£15,400.00	£7,798.51	£23,198.51
7	£2,400.00	£3,104.02	£17,800.00	£10,902.52	£28,702.52
8	£2,400.00	£3,802.06	£20,200.00	£14,704.59	£34,904.59
9	£2,400.00	£4,588.64	£22,600.00	£19,293.23	£41,893.23
10	£2,400.00	£5,474.98	£25,000.00	£24,768.20	£49,768.20
11	£2,400.00	£6,473.72	£27,400.00	£31,241.92	£58,641.92
12	£2,400.00	£7,599.13	£29,800.00	£38,841.05	£68,641.05
13	£2,400.00	£8,867.27	£32,200.00	£47,708.32	£79,908.32
14	£2,400.00	£10,296.24	£34,600.00	£58,004.56	£92,604.56
15	£2,400.00	£11,906.44	£37,000.00	£69,911.00	£106,911.00

As you can see the figures are astonishing, £37,000 invested over 15 years would leave you with a pot totalling £106,911 obviously the tax man is going to be wanting his cut of the cake but you get the picture.

Recently though Saving Stream have been adding a few lower interest bearing loans to the market which start at 8%,

So who am I investing in through Saving Stream?

Well Saving Stream is just the name of the UK peer to peer marketplace which is run and operated by Lendy Ltd who facilitate bridging loans which are secured against property. The average duration of the loans is a few months to a year and added to this lending amounts do not exceed 70% of the open market value of the asset. This in theory means that if anything was to go pear-shaped the asset could be sold and investors should get back their money.

Saving stream has been operating since 2013 in which time over 10,000 investors have earn close to £19 million in interest payments.

Is it easy to invest with Saving Stream?

The platform itself is very easy to navigate and takes no time at all to master. Making payments from the UK can be made by bank transfer using a reference code that you will find in your Saving Stream account. It can take around 1 working day for the money to show up in your account as they seem to do the money run once a day and usually sometime in the mid morning.

There are two markets on the platform, the first is the primary market where you can prefund loans that are on the pipeline. There is often an expected date for these loans to go live but try not to hold your breathe as there are quite often delays, however you will usually receive an e-mail the day before a loan is due to go live. The second market is known as the secondary market, this is where you and other investors can sell loan parts which you do not want anymore for whatever reason. I have found it quite difficult to purchase loan parts on the secondary market as any that show up are snapped up very quickly so you really need to be on the ball.

Receiving your interest is very straight forward. On the first day of every month the Saving Stream Team manually pay all interest straight into your holding account, this money can then be withdrawn to your bank account or reinvested back into other loans.

Is Saving Stream a safe peer to peer lending platform?

As with all investments there is an element of risk whether it is the risk of a loan defaulting or platform failure. The name Saving Stream makes it sound almost bank like and well, like a savings account but it is not, it does have risks. ? You can minimise these risks though by spreading your money over a variety of different loans and by doing your own due diligence. Another great resource is the p2p independent forum which has a great bunch who all club together to work out the good loans from the not so good loans! You can go check out the forum by clicking Here.

In conclusion....

Saving Stream is a great peer to peer lending platform that pays out a great rate with an easy to use interface. I have not personally had any problems in my time investing there but as I mentioned before it is best to spread your money about to reduce any risk that P2P lending can bring.

Happy investing!

*This blog post is the opinion of the blog author only and should not be taken as financial advice, as it is not.