Newbe questions

Days remaining is until the end of the bidding period. Normally what would happen if a loan has not been sufficiently funded is that the money would be returned to lenders but the period can be extended or the borrower could accept a lower amount. Sometimes you'll see a loan with a variable amount and a range given, in that case the loan will complete if the minimum is fulfilled. If you see "instant returns" lenders would be paid that interest from the time of the bid until end of bidding time even if the loan didn't complete.

Not all loans have instant returns but most recent ones have.

Underwritten is a commitment by people to use that amount of money to complete the loan if it hasn't been filled by the end date for bidding. So a loan with 500k applied for, 400k filled and 200k underwritten would take 100k from underwriters to fill it.

On the secondary market you fill your request in best to worst rate then most recently to least recently offered/bid if the rates are the same. I suggest not deliberately combining amounts from several bids/offers because it makes some aspects of accounting less clean, like tracking yields and accrued interest paid/received. So I'd pick 100 first then 50 instead of doing 150 when there are two 100 opportunities unless the rates are exactly the same.

Yes, negative yield is possible but in general you'd find that Ablrate would be happy to reverse the transaction if through some mistake you purchased at a negative yield. The mark up or down isn't automatically changed so what can happen is that the yield on an offer gradually drifts lower over time until it becomes negative. One nice thing about Ablrate is that you can offer to sell something that you don't particularly want to sell, at a rate that reflects what you'd want to sell it. Maybe nobody will bite, maybe someone will. If you've priced it right you won't much mind either way. The rates for this might not look very attractive to prospective buyers, though!

It's also worth being aware that you pay accrued interest when you buy a loan and receive accrued interest when you sell. Accrued interest is the interest from the last interest payment date up to the date of the transaction.

Loan buying for resale definitely happens but resales are slow enough and primary market supply high enough that I wouldn't say that at the moment there's much prospect of it being anything that could be considered predatory. Ablrate have at times taken bids for primary market loans then allocated money on a fair basis when it's seemed possible that a loan would be very rapidly filled if it was just left fully open to bids of any size at initial offering. Of course this could change but given the current supply/demand situation and Ablrate's approach to smaller loans I'd say no troublesome level of flipping is really possible right now. Maybe later.

Comments on flipping are based on my experience doing a lot of both buying and selling on the secondary market. Since I pay good attention I'm pretty aware of the possibilities that are around. I've certainly done a fair bit of buying with the intention of selling, but usually not very quick selling associated with flipping.

I'm very hostile to the idea of widespread flipping but so far I agree with Ablrate's view that at the moment it's providing useful loan liquidity on the secondary market.

Another silly question perhaps (from someone keen to try Ablrate but who has yet to register); is there a minimum investment?  Perhaps an etiquette?  For example if someone was to 'dip their toe' with a 3 digit sum & maybe look to spread it across different loans?  Just to explain I am coming from a background of only ever investing in P2P that have a rainy day fund for about 6 months & prior to that having only ever saved aside from a very small number of shares which were given to me.

We generally don't have a minimum per loan although if your behaviour led us to think that maybe p2p was not for you then we may quiz you! (We have one lender who keeps investing and withdrawing pennies and he is close to a call!)

I'd say most people do £100-500 on their first loan to test the water. If you wanted to try a smaller amount it's not a problem at all and we are always happy to help.

Update: have taken the plunge and deposited a small sum on the platform. Just waiting for it to clear now and I can have some fun

Thanks again for the information, everyone.

You beat me to it!!!  May I ask if you had to provide a scan of your passport?  I was going to sign up yesterday, but I didn't have it to hand.

Not if you use my bank!  Their debit card is permanently getting blocked if I sneeze the wrong way - I went to town on them when trying to make a smallish deposit to a prepaid card; spent 15 minutes on the phone for them to unblock it/assure me that it would go through, only for a second system to block it again (they said the first was VBV, but supervisor admitted not uncommon for both systems to block).  Ended up doing a faster payment & it was certainly faster even with clearing times!