Peer-to-peer lending sites: MSE guide discussion

takesyourchances

As Panther suggested on the forum link above, I have just emailed bdo my Collateral information, name, email address, client number and approx amount to the email address Panther provided on the topic

http://p2pfrankdiscussion.freeforums.net/thread/67/court-hearing-27th-april-2018?page=3

Jackthedog

When they first set up Wellesley were pretty decent sounding with a clear website.

However, they gradually reduced their offer and became rather uncompetitive.

Their financial returns of just over a year ago suggested to me that there could be issues upcoming with their business model so I cashed all my investments in early (I received my money promptly).

Did the same with a couple of others, one of which has already closed.

Always a risk with p2p investments so in addition to the p2p investments themselves, the financial status of the company is always worth a look.

AnnJ

Hi Jack,

Thanks for your response. I see there is an icon to cash in investments but, concerned about them saying they will only release money before maturity as per their discretion. How did you go about cashing in with Wellesley?

firestone

AnnJ wrote: »

Not sure if this is the right place to post this, if not can some please redirect me?


In November 2015 I invested in Wellesley 3 Year Capital @ 5.1% interest and got the free iPad, and today had an email to say that the investment has fallen in value and would require an extra year on top of the 3 year investment to recover the loss, with no projected profit at all! Phoned a few times today but, each time was told nobody was available and my call would be returned by 4:30 PM, no callback received. Also, the entire history of the investments seems to have been altered / removed, with all the matching breakdowns over the period no longer listed on the account! They will only close an account before the maturity date at their own discretion. Has anyone got experience with Wellesley, please?

Could be a bit late in the process but seem to remember very early last year that there was press coverage on Wellesley so may be worth a search.Also note there are some post's on the P2Pindependent forum today

keyboardworrier

I'm glad the Collateral situation is under more control now, I feel somewhat more confident than before with the FCA and the new administrators BDO looking after the situation. Although that confidence could quickly go depending on what kind of things come out over the coming days / weeks!


https://www.fca.org.uk/news/news-stories/information-investors-collateral-companies

https://www.bdo.co.uk/en-gb/collateral-companies-in-administration

takesyourchances

keyboardworrier wrote: »

I'm glad the Collateral situation is under more control now, I feel somewhat more confident than before with the FCA and the new administrators BDO looking after the situation. Although that confidence could quickly go depending on what kind of things come out over the coming days / weeks!


https://www.fca.org.uk/news/news-stories/information-investors-collateral-companies

https://www.bdo.co.uk/en-gb/collateral-companies-in-administration

It seems the ruling was the right one, so hopefully now things can start to progress forward and a plan is put in place to start to return some of our funds at least.

It seems there was a lot of shinanagins going on but I feel more confident in this saga now. It remains to be seen how much we will actually get returned, but hopefully we start to see some filter through once they get to grips with it.

I have done that much reading on forums lately, but I think I read there was just 300 investors in Collateral. If I read that right!

drphila

firestone wrote: »

Could be a bit late in the process but seem to remember very early last year that there was press coverage on Wellesley so may be worth a search.Also note there are some post's on the P2Pindependent forum today

From what I remember, I think the 4thWay website has some info on Wellesley as well

fun4everyone

Thanks indeed to the members from other forums who attended this hearing today and reported back to us.

Seems mega shady, worse than I thought. Money taken out of client accounts straight into the owners accounts. The website was taken down by the owners before the FCA even noticed/got involved. FCA has frozen the assets of the owners etc etc. lol.

I thought Lendy was bad when it was called Saving Stream and never invested on that platform. Instead I chose several other sites but couldn't ever have imagined Collateral would turn out like this and have a good chunk in there .

takesyourchances

fun4everyone wrote: »

Thanks indeed to the members from other forums who attended this hearing today and reported back to us.

Seems mega shady, worse than I thought. Money taken out of client accounts straight into the owners accounts. The website was taken down by the owners before the FCA even noticed/got involved. FCA has frozen the assets of the owners etc etc. lol.

I thought Lendy was bad when it was called Saving Stream and never invested on that platform. Instead I chose several other sites but couldn't ever have imagined Collateral would turn out like this and have a good chunk in there .

Totally agree with you, a lot of savvy P2P investors trusted Collateral openly and some large sums of money was placed through the platform. When it was working, it did seem to work well, but little did we know although the alarm bells started to ring when a lot of the property loans struggled to fill and now we hear of the actions of the people running the operation which we placed and entrusted thousands through.

The likes of property development lending is highly risky as it is without fly by nights running the lending operation which was evident by their extraction of near 400K from the clients account into their coffers before pulling the plug as everything caught up on them.

It is worse than I thought too and it really is the wild west what has gone on and I am sure more will come out!

A year ago, things seemed a lot different with P2P as a whole.

Economic pointed out not so long ago with the stock market there is crashes and you can sit for recovery etc, but with these sorts of failings and defaults etc there is huge risk for capital loss without this sort of thing happening.

I like many have spread across several platforms thankfully with P2P, but I am sure like many this has put a strain on our overall P2P investments.

I withdrew £500 odd from Ablrate today as their portfolio loan repaid early and I did not want to spread this £500 across other loans I am already invested in with enough in each.

At the moment I feel I will drawdown my P2P a bit further than planned a month or two back. My focus is back on increasing my S&S ISA investments and IT's for dividends, I feel I don't think about these as much (and I have a lot more invested) as I know I can leave these invested for decades to come and can take the swings of the market with a long timescale, so I am certainly having a re-think at the moment a bit further.

Fingers crossed my auto P2P remains ok Lending Works, Growth Street and Unbolted and I would leave these to tick over.

MT I will withdraw as and when "possible" on my last 2k odd, which may take a fair chunk of time and then see what comes back from Collateral funds, if anything comes back it will most like go to my S&S ISA.

Albrate will see what loans comes up. At the moment I feel I am invested at my limit for the platform and across their loans at present, so if I feel I don't want to add to any other certain loans I will withdraw. I have not added new money, just re-investing asides todays portfolio re-payment which I withdrew as enough in other loans.

I think it is time to just re-evaluate things, the climate seems ever changing at the moment.

fun4everyone

takesyourchances wrote: »

their extraction of near 400K from the clients account into their coffers before pulling the plug as everything caught up on them.

Yeah, speculation but could this be from loans that were partially filled but not drawn down?

The vast majority of my collateral funds were invested and drawn down thankfully (as long as that wasn't a lie/fraud). Did have a tiny amount in cash on the account.