greatmarko
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Post by greatmarko on Aug 16, 2017 9:44:28 GMT
This wording is clearly displayed at the bottom of the Re-investment settings page on your dashboard: 'The Market Rate is the volume-weighted average rate of the loans matched in the prior 30 days. The Priority Rate is 0.1% below that, and will increase your prospects of being matched with a loan sooner. A Market Rate order will move each day with the Market Rate, while a Priority Rate order will be fixed at that rate once placed.'
It seems clear that the priority rate will not change once you've placed your order. It's not a bug, this is how the system is designed to work. This explains why some lenders are getting their priority orders stuck high and dry for long periods of time. You need to keep checking the priority rate every day. However, you shouldn't have to keep lending at priority rate, it should be possible to get matched quickly at Market rate. The fact this isn't the case is clear evidence the exchange is broken. I don't see how this model can be sustainable in the long run. I would love to know how Growth Street expect to grow their business if they continue to operate a flawed exchange which makes their product less competitive and less attractive to lenders by the day. This platform is in need of a serious overhaul - and quickly. The "bug" I refer to wasn't specifically in relation to the rate (I'm aware it's "fixed" once you place a priority order), but rather it's potential bug/deliberate act in relation to queue position (and therefore time to match) Those with orders at "Priority" rate are closer to the top of the queue than those at "Market" rate (i.e. market rate orders sit behind priority rate in the queue) However, it would appear that if GS change their rates whilst you're waiting in the "Priority" queue, your order is automatically moved further down the queue, back to the previous "market" rate queue position. My point is, surely your position in the priority queue should be determined by when you entered the priority queue, and therefore if Lender A places a priority order before Lender B, Lender A should be matched sooner than Lender B. It seems unfair for Lender B to be matched before Lender A, if GS suddenly change their rates without notice after Lender A has placed a priority order, but before Lender B places their priority order.
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littleoldlady
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Post by littleoldlady on Aug 16, 2017 9:48:33 GMT
This wording is clearly displayed at the bottom of the Re-investment settings page on your dashboard: 'The Market Rate is the volume-weighted average rate of the loans matched in the prior 30 days. The Priority Rate is 0.1% below that, and will increase your prospects of being matched with a loan sooner. A Market Rate order will move each day with the Market Rate, while a Priority Rate order will be fixed at that rate once placed.'
It seems clear that the priority rate will not change once you've placed your order. It's not a bug, this is how the system is designed to work. This explains why some lenders are getting their priority orders stuck high and dry for long periods of time. You need to keep checking the priority rate every day. However, you shouldn't have to keep lending at priority rate, it should be possible to get matched quickly at Market rate. The fact this isn't the case is clear evidence the exchange is broken. I don't see how this model can be sustainable in the long run. I would love to know how Growth Street expect to grow their business if they continue to operate a flawed exchange which makes their product less competitive and less attractive to lenders by the day. This platform is in need of a serious overhaul - and quickly. So with rates falling so fast it is feasible for an order at priority rate to rank after orders at market rate. Insane!
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shimself
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Post by shimself on Aug 16, 2017 15:11:14 GMT
So with rates falling so fast it is feasible for an order at priority rate to rank after orders at market rate. Insane! And given that we now know the platform operators are not clever enough, and also that we know that we don't know where they are lending our money, the blessing is that you can (for the moment) get your money out pretty quickly courtesy of the monthly renewal. Which I have PSM, one of the founders of TC is really strident about the dangers of "maturity conversion", ie not having our repayment date the same as the loan redemption date.
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greatmarko
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Post by greatmarko on Aug 16, 2017 17:39:04 GMT
Well, GS have finally overhauled their "Time To Match" statistics pageWhilst it now shows how much money is currently in each queue, it still doesn't give much of an indication of HOW LONG (in days) you'll can currently expect to wait in each queue. Oh, and the overhauled page still includes the wildly inaccurate phrase " The majority of lend orders placed on the Growth Street platform have been fully matched within 24 hours" LOL GS really need to stop referencing all their statistics back to 8 months ago, and instead limit their statistics window to only include a much more recent time-frame! EDIT: Interestingly, they also show "N/A" for the time to match at Market Rate both last month and this. Now, either they're too embarrassed to publish these stats, or it means that Market Rate orders placed more than a month and a half ago are STILL UNMATCHED! Come on GS, PLEASE stop taking on new lenders until you sort this mess out!!
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savernake
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Post by savernake on Aug 16, 2017 19:42:06 GMT
The new statistics are a step in the right direction, but I still can't see where my order is in the queue.
I concur with the view that they need to stop taking on more lenders until they have managed to bring some balance back into the market.
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metoo
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Post by metoo on Aug 16, 2017 22:41:13 GMT
Interestingly, they also show "N/A" for the time to match at Market Rate both last month and this. Now, either they're too embarrassed to publish these stats, or it means that Market Rate orders placed more than a month and a half ago are STILL UNMATCHED! Come on GS, PLEASE stop taking on new lenders until you sort this mess out!! Correct (AFAIK). Yes, please consider your existing loyal lenders and implement a waiting list for new lenders. The "Priority" queue is getting longer, and there must be people who have earned 0% waiting in the Market rate queue for several weeks without realising it. (Worth raising it directly, as not sure if GS read this).
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greatmarko
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Post by greatmarko on Aug 17, 2017 9:44:42 GMT
So following a "If you have any questions or comments about our updated statistics page, please let us know." popup that appeared when I logged into GS this morning, I've just had a lengthy Live Chat with Growth Street, and they have given permission for me to share their responses... I began by providing my comments on the updated statistics page: - 1) Whilst it now shows how much money is currently in each queue, it still doesn't give much of an indication of HOW LONG (in days) I can currently expect to wait in each queue.
- 2) Please remove the wildly inaccurate & misleading phrase "The majority of lend orders placed on the Growth Street platform have been fully matched within 24 hours"
- 3) Please stop referencing all your statistics back to 8 months ago, and instead limit the statistics window to only include a much more recent time-frame!
- 4) Why does it show "N/A" for the time to match at Market Rate both last month and this? Are Market Rate orders placed more than a month and a half ago STILL UNMATCHED!?
- 5) PLEASE stop taking on new lenders until you sort this entire mess out!!
Growth Street Response:"Thanks for your feedback!
In answer to your comments: We cannot give any accurate prediction of how long it will take for lend orders to be matched, and we don't want to mislead any of our lenders with an inaccurate estimation. The borrower product acts much like an overdraft, so borrowers can request loans as and when they wish, for any amount up to their approved limit. A borrower could ask for £300k today, or they could choose to wait until Monday to drawdown £300k. If you are a lender sitting in the queue with £200k ahead of you, then this will obviously impact how long you're going to have to wait - and there's no way we can provide you with a better estimate. That said, we have aimed to give you a ballpark figure of how fast the queue moves forward per day in the "Average Expected Per Day" box, which is currently £234,279. This is a rough estimation of the average matches per day expected on the platform, over the course of the next 30 days. Of course, one day £0 could be matched, and the next day £500,000 could be matched.
2. The phrase you refer to is not wildly inaccurate - it's factually correct. Whilst we have had a month or two of excess liquidity, for the vast majority of Growth Street's existence (including just a couple of months ago), the majority of lend orders have been matched the same day they were placed. We have provided the live market depth graph to show lenders that right now there are large amounts queueing at each rate, but provided the historic data to show that this is not the norm, and it's only been this way recently. If lenders wish to temporarily take their money off the platform while there are these longer queues they are of course welcome to do so.
3. I think I've just addressed this in my answer to 2. We include data going back a to last year because Growth Street has operated for more than just the few months we've had an excess of liquidity, and it's important to realise that supply and demand has changed over time. We've released live data, and month-by-month breakdowns of average match times, so if you want to completely disregard the historic data you can just look at the most recent data. Those that want to see the previous months' average match times can do so.
4. It shows N/A because no Market Rate order placed in those months has been matched. It's therefore not possible to provide an average match time, because no match times exist.
5. We have massively reduced the number of new lenders we have onboarded to the platform over the past couple of months. We have turned off all marketing, and turned off both the Welcome Bonus and the Referral Bonus. This has cut our new lender activation rate to around 25% of what it has been previously. Unfortunately, we have the excess liquidity is not primarily caused by new lenders joining the platform - it's caused by existing lenders depositing more funds into their account. For example, of the money that was deposited into Growth Street lending accounts in the past week, just 4% of that was new deposits from lenders who'd joined in the past 10 days. 96% of this money was from existing lenders who already had an account. We will continue to limit the number of new lenders who join the platform, but it's important to note this will not necessarily have an immediate desire impact on excess liquidity." Me:Thanks! I appreciate your detailed responses, however, I hope you'll reflect again on the assertion that you " don't want to mislead any of our lenders". As a relatively new lender I feel VERY misled by your statistics page. Whilst I fully accept that historic performance is no guarantee of future performance, etc, there's a big difference between HISTORIC and CURRENT performance, and I assumed that your published statistics were still accurate/relevant when I evaluated your platform a couple of months ago prior to joining, but now I feel very misled. The phrase " The majority of lend orders placed on the Growth Street platform have been fully matched within 24 hours" IS misleading, as this is not a true reflection of CURRENT platform performance (and hasn't been my experience since joining two months ago) So, again, I would ask that you please stop giving out misleading information on your platform performance to potential investors. Please give CURRENT performance information, and an accurate reflection based on recent NOT historic data. One other thing: Lenders with orders at "Priority" rate are rightly closer to the top of the queue than those at "Market" rate (i.e. market rate orders sit behind priority rate orders in the queue). However, it would appear that if Growth Street change your rates whilst a lender is sat in the "Priority" queue, their order is automatically moved further back down the queue, back to the previous "market" rate queue position! Surely a lender's position in the priority queue should be determined by WHEN they entered the priority queue, and therefore if Lender A places a priority order before Lender B, Lender A should be matched sooner than Lender B. It seems unfair for Lender B to be matched before Lender A, if you suddenly decide to change your rates without notice after Lender A has placed a priority order, but before Lender B places their priority order. I currently have a "Priority" order (at 6.0%) that's still unmatched after 13 days, yet others are placing Priority Orders that are being matched much sooner. Why am I being penalised?! Growth Street Response:"We don't ever choose to change the rates - Market Rate is determined by the average rate at which loans have been matched over the past 30 days. When you click to place an order, you can see (in the screenshot below) that Priority Rate orders are fixed at the price you place until they are matched to a borrower. This means if you lend at this rate, you run the small risk that you choose Priority Rate at (in your case) 6.0%, and then it subsequently falls to 5.9%. When this happens, any other lender who wishes to lend at Priority Rate will do so at 5.9%, so they will jump ahead of your initial lend order, because they are choosing to lend at a lower rate. If you'd like to be matched to a borrower as soon as possible, the best thing to do would be to cancel all your existing orders, and re-place your funds at today's Priority Rate (which is 5.9%)."Me:But as you don't notify lenders when rates change, how are lenders supposed to know when rates change and therefore if they need to cancel/re-issue their priority orders, short of logging into a supposed "fire and forget" platform every day?! Also, if the liquidity issues are not due to new lenders as such, but existing lenders depositing more, why not instead temporarily limit deposits from current investors until the imbalance is resolved? ..that would surely help, wouldn't it? Growth Street Response:"We are considering implementing rate-change notifications for all lenders. Thanks for your feedback on this.
With regard to your second question - ultimately we would rather let lenders choose how to act by giving them enough information to make these decisions. We've now obviously released the live market depth graph as well as up-to-date time to match data, so lenders who were considering depositing may be much less likely to do so.
Also just as an aside - I note that many of your questions match those on the P2P Forum. Do you post there often?"Me:I do indeed - and it would be nice if a Growth Street rep would be responsive on the forums too. The concerns/questions I've raised with you today are shared by MANY investors Growth Street Response:"We do keep track of the comments there, and I was indeed intending on replying in order to clear up some of the uncertainty. The difficulty is that we are an Appointed Representative of Resolution Compliance Limited, who are authorised and regulated by the FCA. Every piece of content, including responses to threads on P2P Forum, that we release into the public eye, needs to be submitted as a financial promotion, and checked that it is fair and not misleading. This process can take some days for Resolution Compliance to give us the go ahead, which often means that the response is no longer relevant to the discussions taking place. As you have found, we are highly responsive on our website live chat, but when submitting posts on other websites, it can take some time, which is why we do not (cannot) respond to the queries rapidly."Me:Sure. Might be worth talking to some other platforms though to see how they operate in terms of forum responses - because plenty of your competitors are VERY responsive on the forum, and it makes a real difference to lender confidence in a platform if they're responsive/engaging on the forums Growth Street Response:"Thanks. Many of them are unregulated, so they don't have these restrictions.
Others that are regulated likely do have other systems in place though.
As discussed above, we cannot easily post on the forum, but feel free to share any of my responses above with members who have the same questions."
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littleoldlady
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Post by littleoldlady on Aug 17, 2017 14:46:05 GMT
I don't believe that the priority rate works the way he says, and also on the web site, any more. I think it has been changed to the more sensible option of relisting at the current priority rate, but that the left and does not know what the right hand is doing. Happy to be corrected if I'm wrong.
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ben
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Post by ben on Aug 24, 2017 0:36:21 GMT
Nice to see they have updated the stats but mine do not match them. I still have several loans that have been waiting 4/5 days.
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nush
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Post by nush on Aug 24, 2017 9:55:24 GMT
started to withdraw funds
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Post by p2plender on Aug 24, 2017 13:40:21 GMT
going to new FC?
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Post by beeje13 on Sept 1, 2017 9:38:36 GMT
My latest reinvestment was matched on the same day as the repayment (priority rate of course).
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mullet
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Post by mullet on Sept 5, 2017 15:42:06 GMT
Just discovered my priority rate order had been sat unmatched for 15 days after reading this thread. I can't believe someone has actually designed such a system.
For the sake of 0.1% just have a single queue and stop P**sing off all your customers.
I think my Growth Street has hit a dead end
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Post by df on Sept 5, 2017 19:59:51 GMT
Just discovered my priority rate order had been sat unmatched for 15 days after reading this thread. I can't believe someone has actually designed such a system. For the sake of 0.1% just have a single queue and stop P**sing off all your customers. I think my Growth Street has hit a dead end 15 days is too long. It happens when supply and demand don't match. Zopa did a responsible move about half year ago by stopping accepting new money until the balance reached an appropriate level. I agree, single queue and single rate together with controlled amount of investment from lenders would be a better model. Restriction on investment amounts on popular loans is a common practice for a number of platforms. IMO, GS is making a mistake following RS model. It is sort of old fashioned to offer low rate accounts with massive cash drag.
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shimself
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Post by shimself on Sept 6, 2017 7:27:31 GMT
Just discovered my priority rate order had been sat unmatched for 15 days after reading this thread. I can't believe someone has actually designed such a system. For the sake of 0.1% just have a single queue and stop P**sing off all your customers. I think my Growth Street has hit a dead end Has anyone noticed any changes to the way the website works. My new hypothesis is that they outsourced the software and don't want to spend anything on changes
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