Post by markr on Oct 4, 2016 10:17:08 GMT
I had an email recently to say my toe-dip into the 1 year market had been repaid.
At the moment, the Swift Lend rates are 3.9%, 5.2% and 6.1% for 1/3/5 year which seems reasonable, and I've reinvested in the 3 year. In Swift Lend, interest is earned straight away and capital and interest is paid on maturity, so a fire-and-forget option which could fill the gap left RateSetter's 3 year market. As far as I know, there's no provision fund.
There is also a Flexi Lend offering, where you set your rate and wait to be matched, like RateSetter's market place, but I still find it confusing and lacking in information. For example there's a "market rate", but no way of seeing how much is queued or how long it would take to match at a particular offer rate, and even offers at or below "market rate" aren't matched immediately.
Presentation of information needs some work elsewhere too. For example, you can see all your "active offers" (i.e. offers matched to loans), and click on them to get more info, but as far as I can see, there's no way to see the start or end date of the offer! You can name your offers, so I have got round this by including the start date in the name.
I have a £100 1 Year Flexi Lend offer still active, and even though it is almost all paid off (Flexi Lend pays monthly), it shows as £100 in my portfolio, so my dashboard shows the confusing information that my balance is about £621 but I have £700 of that lent out! Looking at my statement, it seems this loan has made 12 repayments, however it made 5 payments on the same day in May 2015, then steady repayments till October 2015, then one more randomly in August 2016. It's a 1 year contract so should have paid back by now. Has it defaulted? I don't know. It's made 12 payments that add up to £102.45 which is right for a 4.5% 1 year amortising loan paid on time, but I guess some payments were late so maybe I'm owed more interest.
The email promised a secondary market within 6 months, which would be nice but I won't hold my breath.
I'm continuing to lend, and will probably add more funds to this platform, but avoiding the Flexi Lend option for now.
At the moment, the Swift Lend rates are 3.9%, 5.2% and 6.1% for 1/3/5 year which seems reasonable, and I've reinvested in the 3 year. In Swift Lend, interest is earned straight away and capital and interest is paid on maturity, so a fire-and-forget option which could fill the gap left RateSetter's 3 year market. As far as I know, there's no provision fund.
There is also a Flexi Lend offering, where you set your rate and wait to be matched, like RateSetter's market place, but I still find it confusing and lacking in information. For example there's a "market rate", but no way of seeing how much is queued or how long it would take to match at a particular offer rate, and even offers at or below "market rate" aren't matched immediately.
Presentation of information needs some work elsewhere too. For example, you can see all your "active offers" (i.e. offers matched to loans), and click on them to get more info, but as far as I can see, there's no way to see the start or end date of the offer! You can name your offers, so I have got round this by including the start date in the name.
I have a £100 1 Year Flexi Lend offer still active, and even though it is almost all paid off (Flexi Lend pays monthly), it shows as £100 in my portfolio, so my dashboard shows the confusing information that my balance is about £621 but I have £700 of that lent out! Looking at my statement, it seems this loan has made 12 repayments, however it made 5 payments on the same day in May 2015, then steady repayments till October 2015, then one more randomly in August 2016. It's a 1 year contract so should have paid back by now. Has it defaulted? I don't know. It's made 12 payments that add up to £102.45 which is right for a 4.5% 1 year amortising loan paid on time, but I guess some payments were late so maybe I'm owed more interest.
The email promised a secondary market within 6 months, which would be nice but I won't hold my breath.
I'm continuing to lend, and will probably add more funds to this platform, but avoiding the Flexi Lend option for now.