Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose money. This is a high-risk investment. You may not be able to access your money easily and are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 minutes to learn more.

Authorised & Regulated by the FCA (UK) 782496

Why invest in Lendwise loans?

How do I start lending?

Set up a Lendwise Account in 4 steps and start earning!

  1. Open your IFISA or Classic account

  2. Fund your Lendwise Account

  3. Build your Loan Portfolio

  4. Receive Capital and Interest Repayments

Start lending

Choose an account type that works for you

Find out more

We strongly advise that you read our Key Investor Information and Tips on Diversification pages.

Frequently asked questions

Risk / Diversification

Lendwise strives to minimise the risk involved with peer to peer lending. As with any form of investment, there are inherent risks and you may not get back your capital or interest. The main risk that you face as a Lender is the risk of non-repayment by borrowers. You can mitigate that risk significantly by diversifying your loan portfolio and your investment holdings in general. Other risks concern the non-liquid nature of peer to peer lending, which in simple terms means that you should not lend money that you may need prior to the maturity of a loan. Lenders could also face interest rate risk, which in simple terms means that interest rates in the economy could rise but the return on money that you have already invested remains fixed at a lower level.

Lendwise cannot advise you on the suitability of peer to peer lending for you and we suggest that if you are not sure of your risk tolerance or require advice to contact your authorised independent financial advisor.

For additional information, see Risks involved with peer-to-peer lending.

Lendwise offers you a functional loan filtering tool, AutoLend functionality and personalised diversification statistics to enable you to diversify your portfolio and minimise your risk. For more information, check out Ways to diversify your Lending Portfolio.

It is important for our lenders to be aware that, like all P2P lending platforms, Lendwise is outside of the scope of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (“FSCS”). This means that, should a P2P platform fail for any reason, those investing (lending) directly via the platform would not be able to claim compensation from the FSCS. The management of Lendwise is taking all necessary steps and precautions so that if such an event would take place, the money in your Lendwise account will be promptly returned to you (in compliance with FCA Client Money Rules) and the servicing of loans that you have made will continue until you have been fully repaid.

Lending to Borrowers via the Lendwise platform is subject to risk and neither the amount of capital you lend nor the interest repayments are guaranteed. Your capital is at risk, and while we try our best to assess borrower applications to minimise the risk of non-repayment, you should be aware that returns are not guaranteed and use the filtering and AutoLend tools to diversify your lending portfolio and minimise the impact of any borrower not repaying.

If a borrower misses (or does not pay in full) a monthly repayment we will contact the borrower to make the payment or explain their non-payment situation and will re-attempt to collect the outstanding payment. The loan will be classified as ‘in-arrears’ and we will continue our efforts to collect the payment from the borrower. Should a borrower be over 90 days in arrears we will classify the loan as ‘defaulted’ and you may face the risk of non-repayment from the specific loan. We will however, continue our efforts either internally or with the assistance of specialised agencies to recover the amounts due.

Lending with Lendwise

Education finance is perhaps unique in that it enables individual borrowers to achieve their academic and career aspirations and augments their probability of higher future income and repayment ability of the loans you make. As a form of Socially Responsible Investment it offers both a positive social impact and financial gain.

To sign up with Lendwise as a Lender you must be over 18 years of age, have a UK bank account in your name and not be a lender by way of business. You must also read carefully and accept the Terms and Conditions, which detail the Lender eligibility criteria.

Lendwise offers lenders the ability to create a Classic or an ISA investor account. To learn more information about opening an ISA with Lendwise, please visit our IFISA key investor information.

Our borrowers are primarily UK residents studying for a postgraduate degree or professional qualification who require a loan to fund their studies. We also welcome applications from other European or International candidates with an offer from a Tier 1 UK university or any other top European or International university and/or Business School. Prospective borrowers complete a loan application online, which is assessed by our credit officers and credit scoring algorithm and if successful, their loan requests are presented to Lendwise Lenders for funding.

Lendwise applies a loan servicing fee that is chargeable on the interest paid by the borrower. We only apply the loan servicing fee after a borrower has paid thus aligning our objectives with your own. Lendwise does not earn fees from the lender unless the Lender receives their repayment.

We will pay all returns to you gross, ie. without deducting any income tax. Your tax obligation will depend on your individual tax circumstances.

Lendwise will make available to you a statement of interest earned and losses suffered from bad debts in order to enable you to make the correct tax declarations and pay your taxes. For more information on Tax on peer to peer lending please visit www.gov.uk/guidance/peer-to-peer-lending.

AutoLend is a functionality of Lendwise enabling you to achieve diversification of your investments easily, which should minimise risk. It allows you to set customised lending criteria thus personalizing your lending strategy to be aligned with your desired investment objectives. For more information please see “How to Use AutoLend

Lendwise loans are primarily for tuition fees and these are usually paid directly to the academic institution involved. On certain occasions, where Lendwise’s credit assessment deems it acceptable, a small amount of study-related personal expenses may be included in the overall loan amount but the majority of the loan is usually always tuition fees.

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