|
Post by Ace on Oct 17, 2021 10:04:25 GMT
Hi all, I'm looking to diversify my p2p investments a little more (feel I have my fill of property based platforms) so Unbolted is looking attractive as an alternative. Just wondered what the current cash drag situation is with them? I'm a rather lazy investor and would be looking at the autolend option, probably feeding cash in in £1k chunks. I wouldn't expect the cash to be lent out overnight but equally I wouldn't relish seeing it languish for extended periods earning nothing. So how's it looking at the moment? Ok with a little patience, or maybe look elsewhere? I added £2k to my ISA account on 29th Sep. I think there was a balance of about £150 unallocated cash at that time. Yesterday (16th Oct) my unallocated balance was £1,277. So, my balance has reduced by £873 over 2.5 weeks. All lending during this time was via the Autoinvest as there was no manual lending availability. My autolend settings throughout this time were set to £500 maximums in all 3 categories. Note that the algorithm that decides the size of one's allocation is heavily influenced by both the autolend settings and the Available cash balance. A new lender would get funds deployed more quickly than me as I will have had many repayments of capital and interest during that time. Deployment rates can be doubled if you're willing to use both a standard and ISA account. As for "elsewhere", Connective Lending is the only other pawn based Lending platform that I'm aware of. CL won't suit a "lazy" investor as they don't have an autolend.
|
|
|
Post by geofft on Oct 17, 2021 11:32:34 GMT
Hi all, I'm looking to diversify my p2p investments a little more (feel I have my fill of property based platforms) so Unbolted is looking attractive as an alternative. Just wondered what the current cash drag situation is with them? I'm a rather lazy investor and would be looking at the autolend option, probably feeding cash in in £1k chunks. I wouldn't expect the cash to be lent out overnight but equally I wouldn't relish seeing it languish for extended periods earning nothing. So how's it looking at the moment? Ok with a little patience, or maybe look elsewhere? I added £2k to my ISA account on 29th Sep. I think there was a balance of about £150 unallocated cash at that time. Yesterday (16th Oct) my unallocated balance was £1,277. So, my balance has reduced by £873 over 2.5 weeks. All lending during this time was via the Autoinvest as there was no manual lending availability. My autolend settings throughout this time were set to £500 maximums in all 3 categories. Note that the algorithm that decides the size of one's allocation is heavily influenced by both the autolend settings and the Available cash balance. A new lender would get funds deployed more quickly than me as I will have had many repayments of capital and interest during that time. Deployment rates can be doubled if your willing to use both a standard and ISA account. As for "elsewhere", Connective Lending is the only other pawn based Lending platform that I'm aware of. CL won't suit a "lazy" investor as they don't have an autolend. Thanks Ace, that's useful info. So it seems that cash is being lent out, albeit rather slowly. I think I'll open an account with a modest amount and see how things pan out. I may be over fretting about putting too much into the property market, I've little idea how much impact a slump (or worse) in this sector would have on these investments. With an increasing number of p2p offerings being property based maybe just maximising diversity within this sector would be the most lucrative policy, who knows....
|
|
|
Post by overthehill on Oct 17, 2021 13:53:39 GMT
I added £2k to my ISA account on 29th Sep. I think there was a balance of about £150 unallocated cash at that time. Yesterday (16th Oct) my unallocated balance was £1,277. So, my balance has reduced by £873 over 2.5 weeks. All lending during this time was via the Autoinvest as there was no manual lending availability. My autolend settings throughout this time were set to £500 maximums in all 3 categories. Note that the algorithm that decides the size of one's allocation is heavily influenced by both the autolend settings and the Available cash balance. A new lender would get funds deployed more quickly than me as I will have had many repayments of capital and interest during that time. Deployment rates can be doubled if your willing to use both a standard and ISA account. As for "elsewhere", Connective Lending is the only other pawn based Lending platform that I'm aware of. CL won't suit a "lazy" investor as they don't have an autolend. Thanks Ace, that's useful info. So it seems that cash is being lent out, albeit rather slowly. I think I'll open an account with a modest amount and see how things pan out. I may be over fretting about putting too much into the property market, I've little idea how much a slump (or worse) in this sector would have on these investments. With an increasing number of p2p offerings being property based maybe just maximising diversity within this sector would be the most lucrative policy, who knows.... Properties earning income from residential or commercial rent leases and bridging loans (near to 50% LTV as possible) are much safer than development loans often with similar returns. I don't know many borrowers who would jeopardize 50% of an asset value by behaving badly, it's a different story for development loans where there is less skin in the game and more opportunities to profit one way or another.
For hands-off autolending, platforms like Loanpad and previously Growth Street (for business lending) are much safer as everyone has the same exposure, your money is spread across every loan or losses are shared. Other autolending accounts like AssetzCapital can still expose you disproportionately to bad individual loans even though it is advertised as spreading your money across multiple loans.
Putting too much in a single loan or single platform is more dangerous than putting too much in P2P although many would disagree. Platforms with high minimum investments like 1k or 5k and infrequent loans and no secondary market carry a lot more risk. I got caught out with Archover due to the latter points and just about escaped with my shirt still intact from Fundingsecure because I only invested a couple of hundred in every loan no matter how enticing or deceptive it was.
EDIT : I deleted my comment about Elfin Market spreading money invested across every loan. Not sure where I got that, I may have wrongly interpreted this statement from their risk page. I still don't understand the second sentence.
"We don’t put all your eggs in one basket: your investment is split into small chunks which are each lent to a different borrower. We set the minimum investment size at £100 to ensure every lender benefits fully from diversification effects"
|
|
Greenwood2
Member of DD Central
Posts: 4,253
Likes: 2,695
|
Post by Greenwood2 on Oct 17, 2021 15:12:24 GMT
Thanks Ace, that's useful info. So it seems that cash is being lent out, albeit rather slowly. I think I'll open an account with a modest amount and see how things pan out. I may be over fretting about putting too much into the property market, I've little idea how much a slump (or worse) in this sector would have on these investments. With an increasing number of p2p offerings being property based maybe just maximising diversity within this sector would be the most lucrative policy, who knows.... Properties earning income from residential or commercial rent leases and bridging loans (near to 50% LTV as possible) are much safer than development loans often with similar returns. I don't know many borrowers who would jeopardize 50% of an asset value by behaving badly, it's a different story for development loans where there is less skin in the game and more opportunities to profit one way or another.
For hands-off autolending, platforms like Loanpad and previously Growth Street (for business lending) are much safer as everyone has the same exposure, your money is spread across every loan or losses are shared. Other autolending accounts like AssetzCapital can still expose you disproportionately to bad individual loans even though it is advertised as spreading your money across multiple loans.
I don't have money in Elfin Market, consumer credit lending, (there must be others) where an investor's money is also spread across every loan so everyone has the same gains or losses. I prefer that compared to places like zopa and funding circle. It depends on the investor, do you feel lucky punk!
Putting too much in a single loan or single platform is more dangerous than putting too much in P2P although many would disagree. Platforms with high minimum investments like 1k or 5k and infrequent loans and no secondary market carry a lot more risk. I got caught out with Archover due to the latter points and just about escaped with my shirt still intact from Fundingsecure because I only invested a couple of hundred in every loan no matter how enticing or deceptive it was.
On Elfin market every investment is spread across 'a number' of borrowers, a bit vague about how many, not across all loans. Each deposit is considered a separate investment and rates tend to be different for each investment (depending on the borrower rates included) and can vary over time as borrowers dip in and out, and due to defaults. Quite a different model and quite complicated, but a black box at the lender end so you don't see any of the workings.
|
|
|
Post by df on Oct 17, 2021 16:26:07 GMT
I added £2k to my ISA account on 29th Sep. I think there was a balance of about £150 unallocated cash at that time. Yesterday (16th Oct) my unallocated balance was £1,277. So, my balance has reduced by £873 over 2.5 weeks. All lending during this time was via the Autoinvest as there was no manual lending availability. My autolend settings throughout this time were set to £500 maximums in all 3 categories. Note that the algorithm that decides the size of one's allocation is heavily influenced by both the autolend settings and the Available cash balance. A new lender would get funds deployed more quickly than me as I will have had many repayments of capital and interest during that time. Deployment rates can be doubled if your willing to use both a standard and ISA account. As for "elsewhere", Connective Lending is the only other pawn based Lending platform that I'm aware of. CL won't suit a "lazy" investor as they don't have an autolend. Thanks Ace, that's useful info. So it seems that cash is being lent out, albeit rather slowly. I think I'll open an account with a modest amount and see how things pan out. I may be over fretting about putting too much into the property market, I've little idea how much impact a slump (or worse) in this sector would have on these investments. With an increasing number of p2p offerings being property based maybe just maximising diversity within this sector would be the most lucrative policy, who knows.... In my 5 years of p2p I was lending to all four sectors equally (lesser extent to pawn because of less availability). I found that most of my expected and crystallised losses are within property lending. The best performing market for me was consumer lending. UB is worth trying. The risk is relatively low, the reward is appropriate and it doesn't require much maintenance. Just need to set up your lending and communication settings at the beginning. You can request to receive an e-mail when your cash account is running low and then add some more cash if you want to. Sometimes they have manual investment option, you get notified by e-mail, but that has been very rare in the past couple of years. Apart from that it is a 'fire and forget' platform... Good luck
|
|
|
Post by Ace on Oct 17, 2021 17:26:37 GMT
Thanks Ace, that's useful info. So it seems that cash is being lent out, albeit rather slowly. I think I'll open an account with a modest amount and see how things pan out. I may be over fretting about putting too much into the property market, I've little idea how much impact a slump (or worse) in this sector would have on these investments. With an increasing number of p2p offerings being property based maybe just maximising diversity within this sector would be the most lucrative policy, who knows.... In my 5 years of p2p I was lending to all four sectors equally (lesser extent to pawn because of less availability). I found that most of my expected and crystallised losses are within property lending. The best performing market for me was consumer lending. UB is worth trying. The risk is relatively low, the reward is appropriate and it doesn't require much maintenance. Just need to set up your lending and communication settings at the beginning. You can request to receive an e-mail when your cash account is running low and then add some more cash if you want to. Sometimes they have manual investment option, you get notified by e-mail, but that has been very rare in the past couple of years. Apart from that it is a 'fire and forget' platform... Good luck That's interesting. I've only been lending for a little under 4 years, but if we measure performance by average XIRR in a sector, unsecured consumer lending would be my worst performing sector by a big margin. The average across all platforms for me is currently 7.56%, but the average across each unsecured consumer lending platform is: 3.12% for Zopa, 4.46% for RS, 4.69 for LW, and 4.83% for FO. The only one to beat my average so far is EM at 8.89%, but I have a very small exposure there and the account is relatively new. Perhaps I was just too late to the consumer lending party. I agree that most of my crystallised/expected losses are in the property secured sector, but the net returns are far higher than the consumer loans.
|
|
|
Post by geofft on Oct 17, 2021 18:26:11 GMT
Thanks for all the input guys, lots of good stuff for me to digest there. I've been investing in p2p since 2010 (Z initially then RS, FC and LW) during this time I've had no major platform disasters and I'm more than happy with the returns I've been receiving. As you can see most of my investing was in the retail/consumer markets, most of these are now either closed or in drawdown, so I've been pretty much forced to re-direct cash to the property p2p's. This is an area where I've little previous experience, hence my current trepidation - now with Loanpad, Kuflink and just started with Unbolted, I'm sure I'll become comfortable with these fairly soon, just like I did with all previous outfits. I've absolutely no regrets with dipping my toe into p2p all those years ago, not exactly sure how much interest has been earned during that time, but it's probably substantially more than I would have made anywhere else....
|
|
|
Post by df on Oct 17, 2021 22:01:26 GMT
In my 5 years of p2p I was lending to all four sectors equally (lesser extent to pawn because of less availability). I found that most of my expected and crystallised losses are within property lending. The best performing market for me was consumer lending. UB is worth trying. The risk is relatively low, the reward is appropriate and it doesn't require much maintenance. Just need to set up your lending and communication settings at the beginning. You can request to receive an e-mail when your cash account is running low and then add some more cash if you want to. Sometimes they have manual investment option, you get notified by e-mail, but that has been very rare in the past couple of years. Apart from that it is a 'fire and forget' platform... Good luck That's interesting. I've only been lending for a little under 4 years, but if we measure performance by average XIRR in a sector, unsecured consumer lending would be my worst performing sector by a big margin. The average across all platforms for me is currently 7.56%, but the average across each unsecured consumer lending platform is: 3.12% for Zopa, 4.46% for RS, 4.69 for LW, and 4.83% for FO. The only one to beat my average so far is EM at 8.89%, but I have a very small exposure there and the account is relatively new. Perhaps I was just too late to the consumer lending party. I agree that most of my crystallised/expected losses are in the property secured sector, but the net returns are far higher than the consumer loans. By "best performing" I meant that I didn't face any losses and earned the projected interest. Zopa never went wrong for me because I'm on wind down since the day PF was scrapped, only invested in accounts covered by PF. Still have a little left there, but if some of it doesn't repay I'll still be above 3.5%. It was my first platform, I thought it was the safest one to try, but when I've expanded to other platforms Zopa was never more than 6% of my p2p pot. RS was my largest out of 'consumer lending' and it ended up very well. Most of my investments were at 6%+ on RS. It went 50% down at some point, but most of my earnings were outside that period. I'm at negative interest rate on LW, but the losses are very little and if LW survives (i.e. don't go into administration) I should have a good outcome. My earlier loans were @6% and the rest @6.5%. FO It was the miracle. I was expecting a massive loss and it turned to be a profitable adventure. Elfin is going ok so far. I'm keeping my investment low for now, but might slightly expand in future.
|
|
ashtondav
Member of DD Central
Posts: 1,805
Likes: 1,087
|
Post by ashtondav on Oct 27, 2021 12:59:12 GMT
I put in £2,400 two weeks ago applied to all 3 categories with a max of £800 and have lent the princely sum of £176! Is there any way of improving speed of disbursement? Forgive my ignorance, this is the first time I’ve used UB, but at my speed it’s not viable.
|
|
|
Post by overthehill on Oct 27, 2021 13:33:17 GMT
I put in £2,400 two weeks ago applied to all 3 categories with a max of £800 and have lent the princely sum of £176! Is there any way of improving speed of disbursement? Forgive my ignorance, this is the first time I’ve used UB, but at my speed it’s not viable. Don't think so. The last 2 weeks have been even slower than average. I'm sure they are trying to grow the loanbook as there seems to be plenty of lenders.
There is connective lending but I'm still waiting to see any loans !
|
|
Greenwood2
Member of DD Central
Posts: 4,253
Likes: 2,695
|
Post by Greenwood2 on Oct 27, 2021 13:45:00 GMT
I put in £2,400 two weeks ago applied to all 3 categories with a max of £800 and have lent the princely sum of £176! Is there any way of improving speed of disbursement? Forgive my ignorance, this is the first time I’ve used UB, but at my speed it’s not viable. Don't think so. The last 2 weeks have been even slower than average. I'm sure they are trying to grow the loanbook as there seems to be plenty of lenders.
There is connective lending but I'm still waiting to see any loans !
Elfin Market?
|
|
|
Post by Ace on Oct 27, 2021 14:25:21 GMT
I put in £2,400 two weeks ago applied to all 3 categories with a max of £800 and have lent the princely sum of £176! Is there any way of improving speed of disbursement? Forgive my ignorance, this is the first time I’ve used UB, but at my speed it’s not viable. I don't understand why you've lent so little, and not really sure this helps, but I've lent £607.44 between 14/10/21 and 27/10/21 inclusive. My settings were for maximums of £500 in each category and my balance was about half of yours, so you should have lent more than me! For added info my largest 2 allocations during that time were: £259.17 in 2DFDC939A on 14th Oct £94.68 in 2DFDC9404 on 18th Oct
|
|
IFISAcava
Member of DD Central
Posts: 3,666
Likes: 2,993
|
Post by IFISAcava on Oct 27, 2021 14:37:34 GMT
I put in £2,400 two weeks ago applied to all 3 categories with a max of £800 and have lent the princely sum of £176! Is there any way of improving speed of disbursement? Forgive my ignorance, this is the first time I’ve used UB, but at my speed it’s not viable. Don't think so. The last 2 weeks have been even slower than average. I'm sure they are trying to grow the loanbook as there seems to be plenty of lenders.
There is connective lending but I'm still waiting to see any loans !
Put your maximum higher - it is the lower of your balance and your maximum that determines your allocation. (but maybe have a lower limit for the business loans as these are usually a higher allocation)
|
|
|
Post by df on Oct 27, 2021 17:31:59 GMT
I put in £2,400 two weeks ago applied to all 3 categories with a max of £800 and have lent the princely sum of £176! Is there any way of improving speed of disbursement? Forgive my ignorance, this is the first time I’ve used UB, but at my speed it’s not viable. You can double your allocations by opening a 2nd account (IFISA)... but generally speaking UB is not designed for a lump sum investments.
|
|
ukinvestor
Member of DD Central
Posts: 116
Likes: 34
|
Post by ukinvestor on Oct 27, 2021 19:01:36 GMT
Don't think so. The last 2 weeks have been even slower than average. I'm sure they are trying to grow the loanbook as there seems to be plenty of lenders.
There is connective lending but I'm still waiting to see any loans !
Put your maximum higher - it is the lower of your balance and your maximum that determines your allocation. (but maybe have a lower limit for the business loans as these are usually a higher allocation) From the UB web site: As an example, if you have set a maximum amount of £1000 and the total auto-lend instruction from all lenders on the platform is £20,000,
you will receive 1/20th of every new loan less than £20,000. I understand the 1/20th of every new loan (£20,000 / £1000), but where does the "less than £20,000" feature???
|
|