A retail bond for income investors with a 6.5% yield

This new issue from LendInvest could be attractive to income seekers willing to take some risk.

Old people playing mini golf
Most retail bond investors simply wait for the income to roll in
(Image credit: © Christopher Jones / Alamy)

London’s retail bond market was launched a few years ago to help private investors buy corporate bonds. It seemed a good idea at the time – private investors in the US and Italy regularly buy individual fixed-income securities, such as tax-efficient municipal bonds. Yet it has never really taken off and in recent years new issuance has slowed to a trickle, mostly from smaller charities.

However, a few commercial issuers have stuck with the retail bond market, among them alternative lender LendInvest. It issued two five-year bonds: one in 2017, paying 5.25%, and another in 2018, paying 5.375%. Both were oversubscribed. The company has now announced a third five-year bond, this time with a substantially increased yield of 6.5%. Even in an era of sharply rising interest rates, this may appeal to some investors.

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David C. Stevenson
Contributor

David Stevenson has been writing the Financial Times Adventurous Investor column for nearly 15 years and is also a regular columnist for Citywire. He writes his own widely read Adventurous Investor SubStack newsletter at davidstevenson.substack.com

David has also had a successful career as a media entrepreneur setting up the big European fintech news and event outfit www.altfi.com as well as www.etfstream.com in the asset management space. 

Before that, he was a founding partner in the Rocket Science Group, a successful corporate comms business. 

David has also written a number of books on investing, funds, ETFs, and stock picking and is currently a non-executive director on a number of stockmarket-listed funds including Gresham House Energy Storage and the Aurora Investment Trust. 

In what remains of his spare time he is a presiding justice on the Southampton magistrates bench.