What's the reason for the drought?

Now that I've got used to it I think I prefer the new system but I won't be sure until I find out how easy it is to buy pieces of new loans, as and when they come available. There are 7 loans in the "upcoming" list. I have targets for all of them but currently have no free cash on the platform because I have no idea when they will draw down.

There should be more, and some of them have been there a very long time. I suspect a shortage of underwriting capacity until some of the duff bridges have been sorted out. Also the recent problems with a few loans may have caused AC to further tighten up its underwriting and drawdown criteria.

There is a difficult balance to be struck here. There are currently plenty of loans on offer on TC and not enough funds from borrowers, but the quality of security is rather more mixed than on AC. I'm happy with that (there are still enough that I like) but it may not suit everybody.

I just hope & pray we do not have an Amazo-esque crash sale of held units @ 1p a pop!

Would AC's insurance cover such a mishap (not that I'm implying it would happen)

I don't see any difference in the info flow between the old system and the new one.  There's a 'Drawdown' tab on all the website pages for all Upcoming Loans where we can read about the progress -- or lack thereof -- towards drawdown.  I would have expected that when drawdown is imminent this would be noted on that tab, and interested lenders would therefore would have the advance warning they need to make funds available in their accounts for their hoped-for Aftermarket purchases when the loan becomes available after drawdown.  Are AC not being as diligent about posting updates to the Drawdown as they used to be?

Is the suggestion that underwriters still have money tied up in those old bridging loans?  I would have thought they got out of those long ago.

AFAIK the information is no longer being pushed to us, which it was with the old system (shadow bid settlement requests). Also I don't remember seeing anything about imminent drawdown for loan #144, although I may have missed it because I did not have a target for that one and was not following it closely.

I'd like it if the system generated "imminent drawdown" emails for all loans where I have set a target. I do not want to have to check the loan status daily, which gets boring very quickly. As things stand, even if AC do announce imminent drawdown on the website I am worried that by the time I see the notice it may be too late for me to put my funds on the system. And even if I get funds on the system in time I don't know if I will be able to get what I want. Only time will tell.

On underwriting, you may be right but some of the bridges are big loans and I think a fair bit could still be with the underwriters.

I can suggest it again but we often don't know what that level of accuracy to be able to say "it's definitely drawing down in 3 days time".  One way to solve that would be to build in a 3 day delay after drawdown before loan units can be sold...  Will see what the rest of the team think.

Quoting myself is naughty I know, but I'd like to ask a question.

Unlike some of the other platforms, I can't find any statistics on AC's lender base. What size loan do people think the retail lender base can fund without the help of underwriters, assuming that retail lenders do not exceed their personal limits for a loan?

My guess is something less than £1m, perhaps significantly less, although they might get up to £1m over time as new lenders join. But I could be wildly wrong...