Summary experience of Funding Circle over 8 years

I first invested in 2012 and well remember the hours picking out loans and trying to get the best rate. I have exited in 2019 (as far as I can).

I had £20k to £30k invested over the early years, a windfall allowed me to boost that over £100k in 2017.

Triggered by the 18/19 Funding Circle Tax Return I have made as full an exit as is possible during February to April 2019. My 18/19 FC Tax Return shows £9k earned in interest and £9k lost to bad debt.

I now have a legacy balance of £5k, of which £4k is "late". The remaining £1k is up for sale, but I expect it will be mid-June before I see a result as the selling time has got longer and longer.

I asked FC to send me a full list of my transactions (150,000+ rows of Excel) from which I can see that over the 8 years the difference between what I deposited and what I took out is a gain of circa £10k.

I did a quick calculation just based on annual snapshots of my invested balance.

If I had put the cash into a low risk investment at say, 2% compound per year, then I would have made £7k.

On the same basis, if I had looked for a 5% return, then I should have expected £18k.

Assuming I can extract half of my remaining balance over the coming years to add to my already crystallised £10k gain, it equates to roughly a 3.25% overall return.

My FC summary says I have made a 4.8% annual return. I think it overstates the situation because my remaining £4k balance is flagged as late and not yet as bad. If I can be bothered I may re-run my numbers in say, 12 months, once the late debts are resolved one way or another.