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Post by misotu on Jun 16, 2017 9:03:59 GMT
They are not doing it manually we have to, ie, divert funds to holding account, move to ISA account and assign to ISA product. Rather than just change the receiving account for repayments to the ISA product. Not a big deal but a bit of a pain, and I would have thought easily avoidable. Zopa FAQ page: So, it looks like it is an ISA rule, not a Zopa decision. M. No, this is two different things. We understand that you can't just shift existing loans into an ISA wrapper. We are talking about transferring non-ISA repayments into an ISA, which is utterly compliant with HMRC rules.
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Post by misotu on Jun 16, 2017 8:33:18 GMT
I can concur with your idea, it would be nice to be able to set the exposure manually, i.e if I invested 20000 i'd set it to 0.1% to give £20 loans rather than £200 for this very reason. Edit: I have heard back from zopa by email and its been confirmed that an investment of up to and including £1999 will deliver loans in £10 chunks. I guess then that means that an investment of £2000-£3999 will give £20 chunks and so on but that bit is not confirmed just an educated guess I'm now drip-feeding funds into the new ISA account and want to keep my loans down to £10. Completely understand that £1999 is the key figure, but I'm not sure whether that's the sum of new money + repayments + matching or whether it is just new money on offer? Or some other combination? I know it's not overall loanbook size, from observation. Has anyone got a rock solid answer on this one? I'm very happy to spend the time drip-feeding to keep the loan size down.
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Post by misotu on Jun 16, 2017 8:08:40 GMT
I asked and you can't, you have to move funds to holding and then into the ISA. A bit annoying. As annoying as that might be, given there is a set limit each tax year on what can be put into ISA's, I can perfectly understand why they force people to effectively make ISA deposits themselves, rather than have some people forget, go over their allowance, and then blame Zopa. I understand the point, but given the time they've had to ponder the problem, I think it is still pretty disappointing. They have a countdown on the ISA allowance remaining prominently displayed in the ISA screen. Wouldn't have thought it would be too hard to stop repayments transferring into the ISA once that counter reaches zero? Surely they have to have a way of preventing people from adding more than £20,000 of new money to the ISA anyway, don't they? I ended up over-paying into one of my ISAs by just a few pounds one year and the exact amount of the overpayment was returned to the originating account within 24 hours by the building society concerned. I don't mind the manual effort so much, but am fed up about losing the "repayments" classification on the funds. My repayments have been lending out at a very nice speed recently, while Mr Misotu's new funds seem to languish for about 10 days or more.
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Post by misotu on Jun 15, 2017 16:09:40 GMT
It's definitely running now - have managed to open an ISA and transfer funds in from my non-ISA holding account. It worked well - very fast and seems straightforward.
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Post by misotu on Jun 15, 2017 15:57:32 GMT
Mr Misotu has successfully opened his Zopa ISA and transferred funds in with no (apparent) problems. Quick and easy and the site held up. So very happy with that. I can't see any way of directing repayments from an existing non-ISA Classic account into the new ISA Core account. It looks to me like you have to turn reinvesting off, allow funds to accumulate in the holding account and then move them over manually into the ISA, where they are treated as new money and go to the back of the queue. Hope it's just me being stupid. Has anybody found a way of automating the transfer of repayments from your non-ISA into your ISA account? I asked Zopa if/how this would work a couple of weeks ago, and they said they "thought automated transfer of repayments would be possible" but couldn't promise because they were still working on the system.
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Post by misotu on Jun 15, 2017 10:13:01 GMT
Ah OK, thanks for this. Was starting to think I was having a senile episode or something.
I really thought that, having announced the world would change on 15 June, investors logging in would get a banner saying "Today's the Day! Check back later to sign up for our tempting new non-Safeguarded products and our long-awaited IFISA".
Or similar. You know, with better wording, heh.
I'm glad to hear that they are still planning to make it happen though. But Marcoms *really* isn't their forte.
If you ever read this Zopa, you might like to know that anyone reading the "ISAs" tab on your web-site currently sees this:
Our new Zopa ISA is coming soon
The Zopa ISA will be an Innovative Finance ISA (IF-ISA). The IF-ISA ... will launch in the 2017/18 tax year...
... Only platforms with full FCA approval are able to offer IF-ISAs. Zopa is currently working with the FCA to be fully approved and ready to launch ISAs.
Someone in marketing has had months to get this updated. It doesn't even reflect the content of the last ISA blog back in May! Forget the blog. Pay attention to your web-site and email updates to your customers. Please!
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Post by misotu on Jun 15, 2017 9:10:31 GMT
Nothing on the web-site either in terms of the new products or the new IFISA. Everything is exactly as usual.
I'm confused. Did I miss an announcement?
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Post by misotu on May 28, 2017 9:58:50 GMT
RS has its quirks too. When I sold a bunch of 5-year loans fee-free recently I was not able to sell loans with less than £10 of capital outstanding. These loans represented less than 0.01% of the total but I was left with a small rump that will need to run to term unless the buyer repays early. No big deal.
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Post by misotu on May 27, 2017 7:02:49 GMT
Long term Zopa lenders were used to taking all the risk in the pre-safeguard days (and through the downturn in 2008/2009), and many didn't like the safeguarded model. Zopa plus is just a return to the norm for us.
Well, yes and no. A lot of lenders stuck to A*/A markets back then and Zopa Plus doesn't give you that option. It's not just new lenders who might have a bit of a shock when the sub-prime defaults start rolling in ...
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Post by misotu on May 26, 2017 11:00:17 GMT
Having said all that, I will put some funds into their ISA.
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Post by misotu on May 26, 2017 10:48:15 GMT
Tax on bad debt was definitely an issue for higher-rate tax payers, especially those wanting to lend to B and C, but for anyone else it wasn't the key feature of Safeguard. When Zopa set up Safeguard, here's what they said in the "Why choose the Safeguard offer?" section of their announcement blog:
We are introducing the Safeguard offer so you can lend-to-save safely, quickly and earn great returns. Zopa has created the Safeguard in order for you to get back all the money you put into Zopa plus interest on your lending without having to worry about a borrower not being able to pay you back.
Not a word there about tax relief, you'll notice, but now with this sudden withdrawal of Safeguard it's all about HMRC and nothing at all to do with protecting investors.
Safeguard and the Provision fund made p2p more attractive to novices concerned about losing their capital. Unlike the old hands, they were willing to accept reduced rates for reduced risk. Now that Zopa and RS appear to be awash with funds, I suppose making the product attractive to novices and the cautious isn't quite so pressing. Or perhaps the FCA took the view that the existence of Safeguard was potentially misleading for inexperienced investors?
The announcement feels clumsily manipulative to me which is a disappointment because I've been feeling quite positive about Zopa recently!
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Post by misotu on May 25, 2017 9:47:30 GMT
Reckon they'll probably do the ISA as a safeguarded product (at least initially) - unless anybody knows otherwise. Well we know otherwise now ... no more Safeguard because, apparently, Safeguard's primary purpose was addressing the historic anomaly of no tax relief on bad debt.
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Post by misotu on May 25, 2017 9:40:41 GMT
Assuming that the Safeguard fund is sufficient to cover bad debts up to 1 December 2022, when the last Safeguard loan will mature, I wonder what happens to any remaining funds in the trust?
A windfall for someone ...
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Post by misotu on May 25, 2017 9:37:32 GMT
Yes ... interesting that my email says "The (Safeguard) fund was designed to ensure that investors only paid taxes on the net income they received from Zopa borrowers. In 2015 the tax laws were updated: enabling investors to claim for relief on losses from bad debt. As a result, the primary reason for Safeguard was removed, and we have taken the decision to retire the fund."
And there was me thinking that the primary reason for the Safeguard fund was to protect lenders from bad debt ...
And of course, with an IF ISA, there won't be any tax relief available since the interest isn't taxable.
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Post by misotu on May 12, 2017 10:03:58 GMT
Doesn't read that way to me:
Having gained full FCA authorisation, we will submit our ISA manager application, which is required in order to offer our IF-ISA to customers. Initially, our ISA will only be available for existing investors.
They are making a statement about a future offering, the timing of which is uncertain, but stating definitively that the ISA will only be available initially to existing investors. I'm not sure what the current position of the lending queue has to do with this statement about a future offering? Unless the email is badly worded. and you know something I don't!
You're right about lending speed when the Zopa IF-ISA is offered. It will be glacial.
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