Option to Pre-fund MT Loans

manxfinch , the term "pre-funding" is used by different people to mean different things so it's best to be clear what your question relates to. It could be:

a) "Pre-funding" as it operates on Saving Stream, where lenders indicate their "hoped for" allocation in a "pipeline" (ie. as yet unlaunched) loan without needing to transfer any cash into their accounts. Then the loan launches and they're given a grace period (funded by the platform) in which either to transfer in sufficient cash, sell down other loans or else sell some/all of their new loan allocation. Whilst it works remarkably well on SS (and has led to their exponential growth), the level of capital required by the platform to underwrite large new loans makes it very challenging. I can't really see this being a sensible route for MT in the foreseeable future.

b) What I would call "Pre-bidding" (or maybe "Pledging" is better), where lenders place pre-bids in a large new loan before it launches (again without transferring cash) and, once successfully filled, the platform confirms the loan will launch at a defined date / time. Lenders must then ensure they have enough cash in their accounts to cover their pledges at the moment the loan launches; if they fail to do so, those units become "Available" to others (this might need a yellow card / red card system to avoid abuse). I can see this working OK for loans that are larger than MT can pre-fund in full with their own capital, especially in conjunction with a cashback incentive, but it would mean Shuang-time to create the "Pledging" functionality.

c) Target-setting and auto-investing in existing loans on the SM, analogous to Assetz Capital. Lenders indicate the loans they'd like to buy into, load some cash into their account and then leave the "system" to divide fairly whatever loan-parts are offered for sale between all the lenders that want to buy them. This strikes me as a sledgehammer to crack a nut and means either building a system that copes with nanopence-sized loan-parts or else randomly allocates minimum sized parts (£1 per lender?) by ballot or queue. If MT start building this sort of complexity into their platform then I'll be very surprised (and disappointed).

d) Something else ...

I don't really feel a pre-funding system for MT is required right now. 

I think the existing system of allowing only 1% of a loan to be purchased for the first 24 hours works really well and gives everyone an opportunity to get a slice with the rest mopped up after this initial 24 hour limit.

This is just not true. When I got in from work at 6pm, I wanted to invest in the first broadoak loan. Everything had already gone. I missed plenty of cash shop loans for the same reason.

The problem with asking these sort of questions on a forum, is people tend to reply thinking of what benefits them. If you have access to the internet all the time, as I'm guessing most of the previous posters do, the current set-up is good because you have first crack at loans. If like me, you don't, you want the playing field to be levelled.

I don't really understand Ed's point about MT becoming fund-like. If you manually pre-bid, having had access to the loan info, nothing has changed apart from you don't need to be online at a particular time of day. Nor do I understand the above arguments that pre-bids shouldn't be introduced because they aren't strictly needed. Under this reasoning we'd still have cars without power-assisted brakes. Even if you have the time and enthusiasm to chase newly live loans, it is surely easier to be allowed to bid at a time that suits?

The question is, does MT want a broader or a narrower investor base?