Peer-to-peer lending sites: MSE guide discussion

cactusroger

I notice that one of the FAQs which are referred to on today's BDO administration update on Collateral reads thus:


"The Companies' online platform allowed the investors to choose specific loans to invest into and awarded different interest rates and/or priority for different loans or different tranches of loans. Will I be receiving repayment in respect of each loan/tranche of loan that is being repaid in the same priority?

"Whilst the information that has been retrieved by the Joint Administrators to date contains details of the investors and their total loan exposure, it does not provide sufficient detail to extract an analysis of each investor's investments into specific loans or tranches of loans. The Joint Administrators' investigations to recover further information are continuing, and we will update investors in due course."



So BDO do not have possession of the complete loan book?


Perhaps someone can confirm whether or not the directors of Collateral, Messrs Currie, possibly aided and abetted by the previously (and we're told illegally) appointed administrators - RefreshRecovery/Gordon Craig - are involved in deliberately preventing the current administrators BDO access to the full investor records, thus illegally stopping investors from getting their money back. If they have destroyed records, that would be a criminal matter. Maybe they can confirm I am wrong in such speculation.



I'm waiting.

masonic

cactusroger wrote: »

So BDO do not have possession of the complete loan book?

It would appear the complete loan book was stored electronically as a part of the website that was hosted by a 3rd party contractor. Having not been paid, the plug was pulled at some point before the appointment of the Joint Administrators on 27th April. It is fortunate that there are some records of our total balances.

Bit of a bummer for those of us who carefully managed our exposure to individual loans, though the Joint Administrators have not yet exhausted all options for recovering the data.

The proposals due to be issued next week will make interesting reading.

fun4everyone

Will investors be treated as creditors?
From the information currently available, the initial view of the Joint Administrators!!!8217; lawyers is
that investors will be treated as creditors of the Companies as a consequence of s26 of the
Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. A further update will be provide in the Joint
Administrators!!!8217; proposals to creditors, which are due to be issued on or before 22 June 2018

Interesting, a lot of debate around that one.

Guess we all just have to keep waiting. The loan book is going to be a nightmare to resolve. Most of these borrowers were no doubt expecting to be able to renew at will and have good flexibility with their loans. Have no idea how that can happen going forward.

I did read that previous to the legal fight over administration another p2p site offered to take the loan book off the hands of the original administrators. That would have been nice for us imo.

masonic

fun4everyone wrote: »

Interesting, a lot of debate around that one.

Guess we all just have to keep waiting. The loan book is going to be a nightmare to resolve. Most of these borrowers were no doubt expecting to be able to renew at will and have good flexibility with their loans. Have no idea how that can happen going forward.

I did read that previous to the legal fight over administration another p2p site offered to take the loan book off the hands of the original administrators. That would have been nice for us imo.

Wouldn't that be nice! Possibly the only way this wouldn't take years to resolve. FS has refinanced one of the loans now, so things are starting to happen, and the good news is the legal agreements and chattels assets seem to be in order. But I doubt very much the loan book in its current state (i.e. mostly overdue) is of interest to anyone.

My concern is that without full records of investor holdings, there could be legal wranglings with some of the big hitter investors over how to apportion loan repayments. Some investors were part of syndicates that invested on special terms that they will want to try to protect. They may have proof of their investments and terms, which others lack.

Whether or not a creditor committee will be formed and whether or not such a committee would act in the best interests of other investors is now of much greater concern to me.

This could get very interesting.

AdrianC

masonic wrote: »

It would appear the complete loan book was stored electronically as a part of the website that was hosted by a 3rd party contractor. Having not been paid, the plug was pulled at some point before the appointment of the Joint Administrators on 27th April.

If it is that "innocuous", then there's contributory incompetence internally. I've been on the receiving end of a hosting company disappearance in the past, and you ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS make sure you have backups either held locally or with a second (third or more) online partner, in case.


No, reading the BDO news, I suspect a much more sinister reason. It looks like somewhere before the document bundle got to BDO, somebody actively deleted them. Which means either Refresh were terminally incompetent and didn't notice during their entire tenure - or the data was deleted with their knowledge. A cynic might suggest that such a deletion hid the extent of the "withdrawals" that we know were made by the directors.

masonic

AdrianC wrote: »

If it is that "innocuous", then there's contributory incompetence internally. I've been on the receiving end of a hosting company disappearance in the past, and you ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS make sure you have backups either held locally or with a second (third or more) online partner, in case.

No, reading the BDO news, I suspect a much more sinister reason. It looks like somewhere before the document bundle got to BDO, somebody actively deleted them. Which means either Refresh were terminally incompetent and didn't notice during their entire tenure - or the data was deleted with their knowledge. A cynic might suggest that such a deletion hid the extent of the "withdrawals" that we know were made by the directors.

Given everything else we know, a lax attitude to backups and disaster recovery would rather befit a platform which clearly didn't meet the most basic regulatory requirement to be appropriately authorised. Also, having taken note of the platform rep's responses so some of the IT questions raised, I have my doubts there was great IT expertise behind the platform.

There seems to be some speculation that the data has been deleted. However, we have only been advised that it is "not available".

As I've said elsewhere, providers can and do prevent access to systems and data when they don't get paid, but it is highly unlikely it would be purged irrecoverably. If that's happened, then it seems likely it is on the instruction of someone purporting to represent the Companies. But it's still within the realms of possibility that the data still exists and could be made available subject to the ongoing discussions between the Joint Administrators and the provider.

takesyourchances

Just getting caught up on Collateral, does not make great reading, the whole situation is a disaster and goodness knows what happened to the data, nothing surprises me anymore with this and these people involved.

masonic

Another point to ponder: If, as stated in answer to the final Q, we "will be treated as creditors of the Companies as a consequence of s26 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000", then are records of individual investments relevant anyway?

fun4everyone

masonic wrote: »

Wouldn't that be nice! Possibly the only way this wouldn't take years to resolve

Yeah it would be nice, and it was ablrate that attempted to do it previous to the legal wranglings.

http://www.p2pfinancenews.co.uk/2018/03/08/ablrate-buy-collateral-loanbook/

The official rep from ablrate also posted on the p2p forum they were trying to get the collateral loan book.

Perhaps now the administrators have been sorted out this is a possibility. Would be for sure a great outcome for investors.

itwasntme001

I had around 5k with Collateral before they went under. Wont affect me much but still very very annoying!


I am winding down my P2P portfolio and moving to cash/stocks. Next UK recession could be within 5 years and i rather be prepared then sorry....