Alternative Investment Platforms

Other Fintechs 📱
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What are some alternative investment platforms that people use?

Here’s a couple I use:

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I also invest with
Etoro - for the copy trade
Javis (X-O) Share ISA mostly EFT
Vanguard Share ISA
Alpaca general investment and it integrates with tradeview charts

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Bullionvault.com for holding physical gold, silver, platinum and palladium in your choice of vaults around the world.

Yes, Bullionvault, the vault operators (Loomis, Malca-Amit, Brinks) and the governments within the vaults’ jurisdictions are all counterparty risks, but it’s a much lower risk than having a hoard of bullion hidden somewhere in your house imho, and what I like about Bullionvault is that you can immediately sell as much as you want at a tight spread and low transaction fees. Watch out for the monthly fee of £3-6 if you have a small investment as it could be a very high % - you need at least a grand or two on there for a £36ish annual fee to be acceptable, £10k+ stored and the fee becomes negligible…

Whiskyinvestdirect.com is from the same creators and on the same price matching software as Bullionvault, but obviously for whisky instead of bullion. I’ve never used it as I’m neither a whisky lover or a high net worth individual (i know anyone can invest in anything, but I feel like I need some extra zeroes on my portfolio before I start stashing funds in assets that need specialist knowledge and are of unknown liquidity).

I just looked on there now and there is absolutely zero whisky to invest in at the moment, you can only sell, so that asset class must be either be doing phenominally well, or the site is just not working properly. I think it may be the former as there is a notice saying they are waiting for new batches to arrive.

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Masterworks.io for blue-chip art - interesting asset class because it has low correlation with stocks. You have to do an actual phone call to sign up but after that it is quite straightforward. There’s a secondary market but only for US-resident investors, so it is a long term thing.

Acretrader for farmland - in theory relatively inflation-resistant because the underlying asset produces income. US only and haven’t used yet but looks ok. Minimum investment sometimes quite chunky so FPI (on Freetrade) and LAND (not on Freetrade) might be alternatives.

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Crowdproperty
Loans to builders.
1 month up to roughly 2 years. Depending on what’s available.
Very popular before COVID extremely popular during COVID which seemed a little odd.
£500 per loan minimum or £1,000 minimum auto invest (£50 per loan hence 20 loans)
Either way first investment (£1,000 auto invest) back in 2019 was at roughly 8% per loan. Extra 2% if loan is late paying back… without a reasonable excuse IE outside there control, IE COVID. So all loans late. Interest still being owed. Some had it raised to 10% when COVID excuse started to look tired!
£950 capital returned and all interest owed on 19 loans about £115. But one loan still not paid back. Receivers called in. Property up for sale (block of flats). Looking at the property I expect to get back my £50 plus a fair bit of interest.

Have bought 4 £500 loans lately as interest rates are 10% now (12% once late). But look like the interest rates being offered are falling. buying long loans to lock in 10% interest. If it’s a small housing estate I will probably get some money back early (happening)but flats can’t sell till everything is finished as has happened with my £50 auto invest loan.
No flats available at the moment. Loans are mostly multiple IE phased. So could be as many as 9 phases. Phase 1 a 2 year loan with the final phase being a few months.
No secondary market for these loans. And the company has said they don’t intend on offering one.
There is a peer to peer forum

Crowdproperty are on there for those that maybe interested and want to check for losses.
A quick check suggests you are very unlikely to loose capital but may not get all your interest.
Also get in now, if you want to lock in the higher interest rates and go for longer loans
REMEMBER that builders are inclined towards optimism on how long it will take to build out. So don’t invest with expectations of Loan being on time. Expect some early payments as well as houses are sold before the final ones have finished.
At the moment I have one loan late (very short one) and one making early payments.

I consider it a very good on s risk return basis. But only based on the 10% return. If it was still 8% I wouldn’t be putting money in.

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be careful, lendy and few other p2p scams went bankrupt deliberately.

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I had a few peer to peers lost nothing. Got all interest in full. Ignoring the unpaid £50 loan at crowdproperty!!
The dodgy ones should have been weeded out by COVID. But as I said check the peer to peer forum

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I consider gold a terrible investment as does warren buffet.
Also a gold miner could double (or more) its profits if gold goes up $100 while gold itself may have only gone up 10%. Purely an example but an increase in the gold price has much bigger effect on profits of miners than the owners of physical gold.
As an aside I own Augmentum one of the shareholders of the unlisted Bullionvault. So not completely against gold!!