Worried about Funding Circle

GCMatthews2000

I feel quite worried because:
1. The IPO was a disaster and has been badly handled by management, stock price has been so volatile (on a consistent down trend) due to insiders selling all their shares

2. Selling periods are long, it used to be 1-3 days now is at least one month

3. Returns all of a sudden have dropped, I used to get over 6%, now down to 5.5% and dropping, which has meant NO INCOME from funding circle for 3 months so I can hold capital steady

4. They changed information available on website which makes it less transparent

As a result I am pulling one-third of my funds, and depending on how fast they sell I might pull the whole lot.

MoneyGeoff

Keep us updated with how you get on with selling. I have been struggling with it for months now. It takes 30-40 days for the sale to complete but during that time many of the loans fall out of the queue and don't sell. So you have to keep repeating until all your loans finally sell.

It takes forever because you can only ever have one sell instruction at a time. It's really badly designed. On all the other platforms I use you can individually sell loans or cancel sales.

GCMatthews2000

I did manage to sell another batch couple of months ago but with a strange computer glitch, it was showing as not having sold but when I flicked around between screens it changed status to sold whilst I was flicking around. It seemed to me like the loans had already sold but what they show you on the website is not being updated properly from their underlying system.

It surely makes sense to sell in batches rather than all in one go. The batch I am now trying to sell has already been in process for around 10 days.

GCMatthews2000

Although I have lost almost half the money I invested on the IPO, I am still (speaks through gritted teeth) glad I did because I have a much greater amount invested, and it gives me insight into what is going on in the company and forces me to pay attention to it. I view the stock price as a kind of proxy for the quality and integrity of management.... so far fallen from 440 to 243!

bowlhead99

GCMatthews2000 wrote: »

Although I have lost almost half the money I invested on the IPO, I am still (speaks through gritted teeth) glad I did because I have a much greater amount invested, and it gives me insight into what is going on in the company and forces me to pay attention to it. I view the stock price as a kind of proxy for the quality and integrity of management.... so far fallen from 440 to 243!

My preferred method to invest a few thousand into a P2P firm recently was to buy shares in Ablrate who were crowdfunding a couple of months back. As it's a private business there is no way to monitor its 'value' in real time and no way to get my money out.

So unlike if I bought FC IPO shares, I'm not tempted or forced to pay attention to it and have just mentally written it off, but with a potential upside that it might be worth something some day

FWIW, if you are looking to find a home for money you take out of FC Ablrate do have decent tech behind the secondary market they run in the P2P loans people have with them, to allow people to offload loans they no longer want.

jaybeetoo

Funding Circle falls into square hole

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/funding-circle-falls-into-square-hole-2c76q8zx8?shareToken=262772daaba20c06797acf6a842a9cf7

GCMatthews2000

I started to check through my portfolio for loans where my exposure is over £1,000.

First loan they made was to a landscaping company for £109,000, it says more than 2 years of trading. Quick check of companies house shows incorporated only in May 2018....no asset security, no personal guarantee. Why not secured on residential property?

Second loan, company has accumulated losses for last 2 years but they still lent it £56k? No asset
security again.

Third loan, £212,000 (!) to a company publishing a single magazine! It had to raise capital too, so it had £150k of capital plus this loan. Its accounts are delayed at companies house. It has a website where you can see it has sunk a lot of money into organising conferences with no apparent return

Oh crap

TJB24

Thanks OP and others for posting, I very nearly bought shares at IPO and considered putting part of my savings into the platform. Was put off by Brexit uncertainty impacting loans and put my money into my Hargreaves Lansdown portfolio instead. Reading these looks like I made a good call.

nick1234

i have been lending via FC for 6 months now at the highest risk level and have had returns of 9%+, but i havent tried to sell any loans yet. Mine also seem heavily diversified by companies.

paulsaves

Funding Circle shows good rates of return when you log into your account - but these are just paper money unless you can actually get your funds back out.

I put £2500 of loan parts up for sale on 31st March 2019 to see how this process would work out. Today (50 days later) I received a message that says "Congratulations, your sale of loan parts has finished and your funds are ready to withdraw." Good news, right?

Well, not so much - it turns out that only £1600 out of the £2500 loan parts have actually sold. This means another wait for a mystery number of days, to sell a further mystery amount of the loan parts.

Interested to hear if anybody else has had positive / negative experiences with selling loan parts and getting their money out.

MoneyGeoff

paulsaves wrote: »

Funding Circle shows good rates of return when you log into your account - but these are just paper money unless you can actually get your funds back out.

I put £2500 of loan parts up for sale on 31st March 2019 to see how this process would work out. Today (50 days later) I received a message that says "Congratulations, your sale of loan parts has finished and your funds are ready to withdraw." Good news, right?

Well, not so much - it turns out that only £1600 out of the £2500 loan parts have actually sold. This means another wait for a mystery number of days, to sell a further mystery amount of the loan parts.

Interested to hear if anybody else has had positive / negative experiences with selling loan parts and getting their money out.

The queue has been increasing for the last 6 months and is now at 50 days as you say. I can't imagine you'll get much feedback on positive experiences with selling loan parts! Everyone is affected by the queue.

http://p2pindependentforum.com/thread/14673/selling-loans-time-frame

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5978430/funding-circle-slow-selling

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/funding-circle-falls-into-square-hole-2c76q8zx8