Ratesetter Manchester Drinks
Oct 2, 2015 12:30:26 GMT
westonkevRS, starfished, and 13 more like this
Post by markr on Oct 2, 2015 12:30:26 GMT
I attended the investor drinks last night in Manchester, I don't know if any other forumites were there but I'll give a brief report...
We met in the hotel bar area and after being served drinks and some tasty nibbles we were ushered off into a conference room for Rhydian's presentation, which should have been the same as the London one, except in true northern fashion the crowd were heckling almost from the off, so it turned into a Q&A session very quickly!
Interestingly, for us, the purplisation of the website, the "lend now" screen, and the new market rate algorithm didn't feature in the questions at all, which does suggest that the things that irk us here aren't representative of Ratesetter's customers in general, which is pretty much as I suspected. Somebody did say that they didn't like the website, and Rhydian stated that they will refresh it every few years. As for the market rate, the only question was asking whether too many "passive" investors simply accepting market rate would actually destabilise the market. About 18% of Ratesetters are active (I can't remember if that was by number or by money invested though).
Institutional money was brought up in the presentation and brought a few questions. Rhydian reiterated that institutional money, representing about 10% of Ratesetter's loans, is a small proportion of the total and a much lower proportion than the other large platforms. He was keen to point out that institutions do not receive any preferential treatment and will not dictate the direction in which the platform evolves (suggesting that FC's recent move to fixed rates was to please the institutions, although my view is it was at least partly because they couldn't scale the auction model). Institutions do have a different "view" of Ratesetter than retail investors, for example they do not have the provision fund, but they do not cherry-pick loans.
One investor stated that they were concerned about Ratesetter's move into business loans. Rhydian was reassuring in saying that they are being prudent, the business loans would be all of roughly A+/A level on FC, for example, and so far they haven't had a business loan default. RS don't have a target for the proportion of business vs consumer loans, they will pretty much "go with the flow".
There were some interesting "watch this space" responses to questions. One was to a question about advertising, so expect to see more RS adverts. Someone pointed out that they are frustrated by early repayments since they are investing for a target date, and this is recognised and being worked on, which should be interesting.
As expected, ISAs came up as well, Ratesetter will of course be launching an ISA, and investors were pleased to hear that existing ISAs will be transferable into an RS P2P ISA. Less certain was transferring existing loans into an ISA; Ratesetter would like to allow this in a simple way, but the treasury aren't keen on platforms encouraging it since they'd prefer ISAs were funded with new money. A question was asked about rates, and Rhydian agreed that rates are almost certainly going to fall as a result of the ISA.
Following this session was more delicious nibbles, wine and beer, which is why I've probably forgotten a lot of what was said! It was interesting to meet other Ratesetters and see what people outside the confines of this forum consider as important. One thing I noticed was in the informal gatherings, much of the talk was about Funding Circle, maybe because Ratesetter, in the words of Kev, is proud to be boring!
Apart from food and alcohol, there were no freebies. Luckily the weather was gorgeous and umbrellas weren't necessary.
We met in the hotel bar area and after being served drinks and some tasty nibbles we were ushered off into a conference room for Rhydian's presentation, which should have been the same as the London one, except in true northern fashion the crowd were heckling almost from the off, so it turned into a Q&A session very quickly!
Interestingly, for us, the purplisation of the website, the "lend now" screen, and the new market rate algorithm didn't feature in the questions at all, which does suggest that the things that irk us here aren't representative of Ratesetter's customers in general, which is pretty much as I suspected. Somebody did say that they didn't like the website, and Rhydian stated that they will refresh it every few years. As for the market rate, the only question was asking whether too many "passive" investors simply accepting market rate would actually destabilise the market. About 18% of Ratesetters are active (I can't remember if that was by number or by money invested though).
Institutional money was brought up in the presentation and brought a few questions. Rhydian reiterated that institutional money, representing about 10% of Ratesetter's loans, is a small proportion of the total and a much lower proportion than the other large platforms. He was keen to point out that institutions do not receive any preferential treatment and will not dictate the direction in which the platform evolves (suggesting that FC's recent move to fixed rates was to please the institutions, although my view is it was at least partly because they couldn't scale the auction model). Institutions do have a different "view" of Ratesetter than retail investors, for example they do not have the provision fund, but they do not cherry-pick loans.
One investor stated that they were concerned about Ratesetter's move into business loans. Rhydian was reassuring in saying that they are being prudent, the business loans would be all of roughly A+/A level on FC, for example, and so far they haven't had a business loan default. RS don't have a target for the proportion of business vs consumer loans, they will pretty much "go with the flow".
There were some interesting "watch this space" responses to questions. One was to a question about advertising, so expect to see more RS adverts. Someone pointed out that they are frustrated by early repayments since they are investing for a target date, and this is recognised and being worked on, which should be interesting.
As expected, ISAs came up as well, Ratesetter will of course be launching an ISA, and investors were pleased to hear that existing ISAs will be transferable into an RS P2P ISA. Less certain was transferring existing loans into an ISA; Ratesetter would like to allow this in a simple way, but the treasury aren't keen on platforms encouraging it since they'd prefer ISAs were funded with new money. A question was asked about rates, and Rhydian agreed that rates are almost certainly going to fall as a result of the ISA.
Following this session was more delicious nibbles, wine and beer, which is why I've probably forgotten a lot of what was said! It was interesting to meet other Ratesetters and see what people outside the confines of this forum consider as important. One thing I noticed was in the informal gatherings, much of the talk was about Funding Circle, maybe because Ratesetter, in the words of Kev, is proud to be boring!
Apart from food and alcohol, there were no freebies. Luckily the weather was gorgeous and umbrellas weren't necessary.