Peer-to-peer lending sites: MSE guide discussion

Zero_Sum

Guru86 wrote: »

Hi all, I have a little bit of money to invest a month from MB.

Looking at an ISA with P2P lending. Just looking for some recommendations for the companies, I am thinking either ratesetter or Zopa?

Do I need to invest an amount each month or can I miss a month if no spare cash from the MB?

Thank You.

Zopa you need an intial deposit of £1,000. Ratesetter its £10.
However with ratesetter, if you deposit £500 & keep it invested for at least a year, you'll qualify for £50 cashback.

After that you can deposit as little as you like, infrequent as you like.

Nardge

FAO Bxboards, Keyboardworrier

I'll keep you posted with my experiences of the above four, all of whom received glowing '4th Way' references.

Sadly I missed out on the Loanpad/Quidco 2% Cashback deal for reasons twofold. I was hoping 'Growth Street' would be my 'new' ISA account for this tax year in lieu of the current GSA that it is currently (incidentally the ISA will attract 5.8% rather than the GSA's 5.3%), the result of which was I transferred only 'old' not 'new' ISA money to 'Loanpad'.

FAO Guru 86

The above firms (bar 'Funding Circle' - see below) are largely considered the 'respectable' ones by many, and were joined largely as a result of gleaning what was said on this specific thread, or it's allied MSE Forum threads. The most recent four were joined on the strength of '4th Way' appraisals... No one has volunteered any negative information regarding any of the same here either.

With Kind Regards

Nardge

FAO Everyone

AVOID OR LEAVE FUNDING CIRCLE?

There has been a fair amount of nervousness in recent months vis-à-vis Funding Circle.
Thankfully I began the process of pulling my own plug some months ago in view of the incessant defaults.

The recent '4th Way' Review was also rather concerning...
I enclose it below as a contribution to helping others as I've been very glad to receive the same.

"We used to praise Funding Circle for its openness in sharing details about its business, which used to include “sharing the fine detailed history of each loan over time”, which allowed us to assess its performance using both bank risk modelling and investing techniques.

However, Funding Circle withdrew this information in spring 2018, which leaves a big question mark over its future. In many ways, withdrawing data that it used to provide causes me more suspicion than if it had never allowed its users and analysts to see the data at all.

Without that data, Funding Circle is no longer able to earn 4thWay PLUS Ratings or 4thWay Risk Scores on its lending accounts.

Funding Circle has demonstrated that it understands and contains the risks when approving loans, and it has historically priced interest rates well. Since we now get less information and since expected interest rates have fallen considerably, we can now no longer be sure whether it offers a large margin of safety in the event of severe economic disasters".

https://www.4thway.co.uk/candid-opinion/funding-circle-review/?utm_source=4thWay%20News%20and%20Tips&utm_campaign=3f6de02645-Newsletter_55&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_415f2326f1-3f6de02645-583091249

With Kind Regards

fun4everyone

Fellow Collateral investors I notice that BDO have provided the "Final administration progress report"

https://www.bdo.co.uk/getmedia/13ab09ae-298a-4b07-bc67-cd7e1000811b/Collateral-Companies-Final-Administration-Progress-Report.pdf.aspx

This was not emailed to anyone apparently, it was only placed on the website. Hence I for one did not notice it until now.

Cliff notes : Best prepare for getting very little back unless we can force the FCA to cough up the shortfall. Fees appear to currently be around £1.3m with £1.6m recovered so far :rotfl:. Even if going forward that ratio is better then it's still looking bad.

takesyourchances

fun4everyone wrote: »

Fellow Collateral investors I notice that BDO have provided the "Final administration progress report"

https://www.bdo.co.uk/getmedia/13ab09ae-298a-4b07-bc67-cd7e1000811b/Collateral-Companies-Final-Administration-Progress-Report.pdf.aspx

This was not emailed to anyone apparently, it was only placed on the website. Hence I for one did not notice it until now.

Cliff notes : Best prepare for getting very little back unless we can force the FCA to cough up the shortfall. Fees appear to currently be around £1.3m with £1.6m recovered so far :rotfl:. Even if going forward that ratio is better then it's still looking bad.

Goodness, never saw this either! £1.3m fees and £1.6m recovery! all you can do is laugh, what else! :rotfl:Bdo are doing the best out of this



I have mentally written this mess off as the way it is going and has been going it is a total shambles. I have my local MP in contact with the FCA over it all, so done that part like others.



I know others have much higher sums involved that me and I feel for them as there was some huge sums involved, 10's of thousands that have really hit people hard. My £4500 is not small change to many, but I have mentally offset it against other P2P gains when was invested and getting out of P2P.



I have never made more than £4500 in interest in P2P so the whole P2P thing has been a waste of time on my part with Collateral going down.



But if I take my overall investment portfolio I am up counting in stock investments, so I have put this Collateral mess down to a very bad investment. Of course I would like to see as much as possible back from Collateral, but it is not looking hopeful the way things are going so what else but move on with other investing and life.



My P2P days are over, maybe I will get my remaining £500 defaults out of MT to bring down the total -£5000


The whole thing has brough me back to sticking to long term stock investing and I scrapped P2P fully. I am much more comfortable with the swings of the stock market than the wild west of P2P finance and at 39 feel this is much better for the long term for me.

AdrianC

The fees are heavily front-loaded - especially given that the combo of Col and RR managed to "lose" all the loan part records...

Recoveries, otoh, are heavily tail-loaded. That we're already more recovered than spent can only be a good thing.

fun4everyone

AdrianC wrote: »

The fees are heavily front-loaded - especially given that the combo of Col and RR managed to "lose" all the loan part records...

Recoveries, otoh, are heavily tail-loaded. That we're already more recovered than spent can only be a good thing.

Yeah I read the thread on p2p forum and see what you are saying. Going forward the % of fees to amount recovered should be a lot better. It's still looking bad imo unless the FCA are forced to give some compensation.

Takesyourchances : I am going to end up down on p2p overall taking every site and bonus into account probably after all is said and done as well. Learned my lesson now.

AdrianC

All the costs of data recovery should be coming from the directors of Col and - especially - RR. It was their utterly mind-melting incompetence (so bad, that it must surely have been deliberate action?) that caused the databases to be lost with no backups.

What Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery plans...?

takesyourchances

fun4everyone wrote: »

Takesyourchances : I am going to end up down on p2p overall taking every site and bonus into account probably after all is said and done as well. Learned my lesson now.

It is a hard blow to recover from even if spread across lots of platforms like I was and seems you were too, I made about £550 interest with Ablrate before I sold out when trying to get out of P2P. If I took a rough guess, maybe about £2000 odd in interest in P2P, I would need to sit and add it all up, which being honest I can't see me doing at this stage



I am more hopeful of the MT recovery, Bollington and Plymouth, but they may take time and I am not really thinking of them. Lesson learnt for me too.



I am making progress with the dividend side of my stocks investing, it takes time but it slowly has been gathering pace and I should be on course to have about 2.5k or more in dividends during 2019 and can see the potential ahead with how it has grown the last couple of years. I feel this is much more sustainable long term than P2P. Any recoveries I may get will go into stocks.


P2P is a sector I just don't want involved with again

fun4everyone

AdrianC wrote: »

All the costs of data recovery should be coming from the directors of Col and - especially - RR.

Yep of course it should, but pretty much 0 chance it actually does.