Investing in personal loans can be ethical when the loans are affordable, fairly priced, clearly explained and managed with patience when a borrower struggles. The ethics sit in how the lending is done rather than in the asset class, so the useful test for anyone weighing ethical investing options is simple: what happens to the borrower before, during and after the loan?
Consumer lending is a good place to apply that test, because the outcomes can be measured: who was approved, who repaid, who struggled and what happened next. At The Money Platform (TMP), we publish loan performance figures every year in our Outcomes Statement.1
We have lent over £85m of lender funds to UK borrowers since 2016 and are now growing our mid-prime range of larger, longer-term personal loans. We have been named Peer to Peer Loan Provider of the Year at the MoneyAge Awards 2026, and we are also shortlisted for Peer-to-peer lender of the year at the Alternative Credit Awards Europe.2,3 This guide sets the evidence alongside our own borrower research, so you can judge the question on the facts.
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A personal loan, including short-term and mid-prime lending, is an ethical investment when the borrower can afford it, the price is fair for the risk, the terms are clear and the lender stands by the borrower if repayments get difficult. That is the standard we lend to, and we publish the evidence against it:
It matters because of who we lend to. Our credit assessment lets us accept customers who are often excluded from mainstream credit, typically younger people and migrants in the UK who do not yet have a significant credit footprint.6
The need for money does not disappear with a declined application. Of the 15.3 million UK adults who applied for regulated credit in the two years to May 2024, 22% (3.2 million) were turned down, according to the FCA’s Financial Lives survey, and 45% of those refused said they could not get the product or service they needed at all.7 Personal loans were among the products with the highest refusal rates.
Some people go further down the ladder. Research published by Fair4All Finance in 2024 estimated that 3.3 million people in Great Britain had used an illegal moneylender, or believed someone in their household had, in the previous three years, and linked this to demand for credit outstripping legal supply for people on lower incomes.8
Our own research points the same way. In a survey of 131 people who began applying to us but did not take a loan, 66% said they still needed the money and did not get it. Across the whole group, 14% then missed or were late with a bill, 12% went without essentials such as food, heating or transport, and 15% said it affected their health or how they felt.9 For ethical investing, then, a regulated loan is rarely competing with a cheaper loan. It is competing with a missed bill, a cold house or a loan shark.
Mid-prime loans give borrowers more room: £1,000 to £2,500 repaid over 12 to 24 months as at October 2026. Spreading a larger amount over one to two years keeps each instalment smaller than it would be over a few months.
That is what many would-be borrowers tell us they want. When we asked the same 131 people what would have made them more likely to go ahead, 27% pointed to a lower interest rate or total cost and 18% to longer to repay or smaller repayments.9
We have already seen the difference. As we expanded into mid-prime, borrowers engaged more with our collections process, and defaults fell as a result.1 The growing mid-prime book is also giving us a clearer view of performance, which we use to keep refining our credit decisions.1 Alongside the mid-prime range, we continue to offer short-term loans of £300 to £1,250 over two to four months.
For lenders, the practical difference is duration. Money lent into a mid-prime loan is repaid over the life of the loan, so it is committed for longer than in a loan of a few months.
Each application is assessed with the TMP Score, a credit model we built because standard credit scores often give an incomplete picture of someone’s finances, and that broader view is the core of our financial inclusion case. Applicants go through a soft credit check that does not affect their credit score, and the lending decision is fully automated; it takes no account of protected characteristics such as gender or race.10
An approved offer stays open for 30 days, so a borrower can choose the amount and term without being rushed, and we have issued more than 170,000 loans since 2016.10
A borrower who changes their mind within 14 days repays only the amount borrowed and the interest accrued to that point, with no other fees or charges.5 We surveyed 43 borrowers who had done so: 38 said the total cost had been very or fairly clear when they took the loan, and 40 found cancelling very or fairly easy.9
Our collections process was developed with the insight of a former Senior Financial Ombudsman adjudicator, and its aim is to keep borrowers engaged with us and to provide appropriate support when they experience repayment difficulties.
Our Outcomes Statement shows the effect. For loans maturing in the year to 31 January 2026, 16.8% were in managed delinquency, where the borrower has made partial payments or agreed an alternative plan, while just 6.1% were in non-payment, below the 6.9% we had forecast.1 Far more of the borrowers who hit difficulty were working through a plan with us than had stopped paying.
Most borrowers who have repaid a loan with us say it helped. In a survey of 239 of them, 79% said the loan solved the problem they had borrowed for, and a further 15% said it helped but not completely.9 Almost three-quarters (74%) had no difficulty making repayments, 57% said their finances were better than before, and 76% were glad they had taken it.
The benefit often outlasted the loan. 27% said their access to other credit had improved since, 21% had been accepted for a credit card, and 89% rated their experience of borrowing from us four or five out of five.9
Our forecast lifetime annualised return for loans maturing between February 2026 and January 2027 is 13.0% p.a., after losses and fees, and mid-prime loans are included in that analysis.1 Forecasts are not a reliable indicator of future performance.
Our lending assessments are designed to reduce the risk of unaffordable lending and borrower non-payment, but they cannot eliminate either risk. 92% of our lenders who have funded more than 50 loans are in profit on their account, according to TMP’s internal analysis, as of 1 June 2026 and unaudited, covering loans written since our current credit decision engine launched in July 2018 and more than six months old.11 Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.
Our loans are not an ESG-labelled product, and investors with a formal ESG mandate should apply their own criteria; social-impact investors tend to look for evidence on access, affordability and treatment, which is what this guide has set out. Not every loan on our platform is a Lender-Funded Loan. We also fund some loans from our own balance sheet, which makes us a lender as well as a marketplace.
Registration takes five to 15 minutes and covers your personal details, investor self-classification, an appropriateness test and Know Your Customer checks. A mandatory 24-hour cooling-off period follows. Once your account is enabled you deposit funds and choose which loan sizes you are willing to fund, and repayments can be reinvested automatically into the bands you have switched on.
The number of loans you can fund depends on the amount you invest, and the loan sizes you select. The right amount depends on your own circumstances.
Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose money. This is a high-risk investment. You may not be able to access your money easily and are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 mins to learn more
Explore more about lending with The Money Platform
Our guide to whether P2P lending is regulated explains the rules behind lender onboarding, borrower checks and client money. You can browse the full library at https://themoneyplatform.com/blog.
Mid-prime loans run for 12 to 24 months. Money lent into one comes back to you as the borrower repays, in instalments over the term, or sooner if the borrower settles early. You may not be able to access it easily before then.
No. The Financial Services Compensation Scheme does not cover investments in P2P loans, and any loan you make is unsecured.4
No. The 13.0% figure is a forecast for the platform as a whole. Your own return depends on how your borrowers repay and on your portfolio mix, and can be lower.1 You could lose some or all of the money you invest.
The loan contracts remain enforceable, and the fees payable under them would be sufficient to cover the cost of administering them during a wind-down.4 Even with these arrangements in place, a disorderly failure could make it take longer to get your money back or mean you do not get it all back.11
Who can invest with TMP?
Lending is open to investors who self-classify as high net worth, sophisticated or restricted investors, pass the appropriateness test and complete Know Your Customer checks during registration.
Loans are subject to status and affordability. Over 20 years only.
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