EasyMoney scraps bottom rate product
EasyMoney has scrapped its bottom rate investment product and has moved account holders to its premium account.
The move will take the peer-to-peer property lending platform’s target annual interest rate from 3.08 per cent to 4.03 per cent.
The decision comes as the cost-of-living crisis takes hold in the UK, hitting those with little to no savings hardest.
Jason Ferrando, chief executive of EasyMoney said that the team had many discussions over what it could do to help and decided that removing the lowest return account was the right move. The change means everyone’s target rate with less than £10,000 has increased by 0.95 percentage points.
Read more: EasyMoney pays back £10m of interest to investors
The platform is reviewing the rates in the market weekly, Ferrando added. He said they have no plans to further increase rates in the immediate future but the team is having weekly discussions and listening to feedback.
“Although our lowest level investors have received an increase in the target rate, our borrowers are enjoying the same competitive interest rates, we made a decision to leave the outgoing rates alone, at least for the moment,” he said.
“We would rather attract higher quality loans with a lower risk, whilst approaching economic uncertainty. We review the market and our rates frequently so things may change over the coming months.”
Ferrando took over the helm at EasyMoney in August, succeeding Andrew de Candole who had been chief executive since the platform’s launch in 2018.
According to the group’s latest set of results it doubled its profits and revenues between 2020 and 2021. Total lending to date passed £200m in mid-July.
Read more: EasyMoney doubles profits and revenues