P2P investment aggregator InvestUp plans relaunch

PEER-TO-PEER investment aggregator InvestUp is relaunching with a new algorithm and plans to work with challenger banks.

InvestUp was purchased by the White Label Company – owned by Rebuildingsociety boss Dan Rajkumar – in 2017 when the original founders, including Chris Bradbury and James Tuckett, were looking for an exit.

It manages a small loanbook of around £10,000 that auto-invests across a range of P2P lending platforms but operations manager Kieron Greef has spent the past two years working on a new strategy that is now ready for release.

Currently, investors complete a risk questionnaire and tell InvestUp’s lending robot Bert-E about the type of P2P loans, target rate and platforms they want to back.

Funds were then spread evenly across each platform.

Read more: P2P supermarket InvestUp trials inclusion of cryptocurrencies

A new option will be launched called Bert-E’s Choice that will pool investor money and allocate more to platforms with higher returns.

The algorithm will also assess the strength of a platform by investing one per cent initially in new providers for six months.

The health and performance of the platform is monitored in both versions to see if funds need to be withdrawn.

This happened during the collapse of Lendy, which InvestUp had funds in but spotted issues early.

Some funds were withdrawn ahead of the platform’s collapse but there is still some money to be returned from the administrator.

Greef said he is planning to contact challenger banks such as Monzo and Starling to have InvestUp as an investment option through their apps.

“We have been through a transitionary period and took time to see how the entire business worked so haven’t been very vocal,” he said.

“Some P2P institutional funds have closed but that has been from a lack of understanding of how to position themselves.

“There is still a place in the market as long as clients can be protected and we can do that through our algorithm.”