Yeah, there's a load of these p2p lending companies in the UK, some of them even describing themselves as 'savings' schemes rather than as speculative investmen

Yeah, there's a load of these p2p lending companies in the UK, some of them even describing themselves as 'savings' schemes rather than as speculative investment. That kind of language is asking for trouble. The business model even has remarkable similarities to some of the fundamental problems that aggravated the last mortgage collapse: the people who are credit rating these investments (i.e. the companies like Lending Club, Funding Circle, Zopa, RateSetter, Saving Stream and so on) are not the people taking the risk. So there's a great chance that the credit ratings will turn out not to be robust enough. IMO these companies should be forced to invest some of their own money in each of their lending offerings.