Peer-to-peer finance rewards are often not worth the risks

Many of the new 'democratic finance' projects are nice ideas. But for too many of them, the returns aren't high enough to justify the extra risks involved in investing in them.

The wave of peer to peer (P2P)financial businesses is almost overwhelming at the moment.

Abundance Energy has just bought its first wind project back on line after a few cash flow hiccups. You can read my past views on this here, but it seems to me that it doesn't offer anywhere near a high enough return to make it worth the obvious risks. The fees are pretty high too. I've also written in this week's MoneyWeek magazine (subscribe to MoneyWeek magazine) about the Seedrs, a new launch business aiming to democratise investment in startups. Nice idea but, boy, is it ever risky. To say nothing of expensive

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.