carolus
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Post by carolus on Aug 21, 2020 8:19:05 GMT
You obviously haven't been hanging out much with anxious and/or angry parents. Continuing with the exams would have been even worse, hard though that may be to believe, and drawn out over several months. I can’t fathom why external exams were cancelled. The final term in exam year is typically roughly first 1/4 school lessons, second 1/4 mostly work from home revising on exam leave, third 1/4 exams, last quarter demob happy. I can’t speak for all parents but were I to have been in that situation I’d have preferred my child to sit the exams even if it meant no school in the last term other than exams. I think that’s the biggest blunder; not treating Y11 and Y13 as the only years that would soldier on largely as normal when normal is annually studying from home and socially distant exam sitting. A savvy government could have easily sold that strategy to the nation. In the face of heavy resistance a partial cave-in to cancel GCSEs would have been a reasonable trade off and a manageable sacrifice. A levels should never have been cancelled. As it is I’m only aware of one faculty within one university that had the foresight to refuse to get caught up in the no-exams blunder. The STEP papers two and three WEREN’T cancelled by Cambridge and as a result Cambridge Maths 2020 cohort will have been as rigorously selected as per previous years. Good to see that a 500 year tradition of continuous rigorous thinking at all times without exception wasn’t sacrificed on the altar of half-baked COVID hysteria. For what it's worth, STEP is a private exam, so wasn't caught by the cancellation of public exams. That said, it was still impacted. The papers that went ahead were sat online instead of in person. STEP is rather a special case, however, and I'm not sure that the circumstances that made it practical to go ahead with it online (small cohort, very specific purpose), would have been applicatble for the wider A-Levels and GCSEs. With regards to the wider point, I think it's worth bearing in mind that the decision on whether or not to go ahead with the exams was made back in March, when the situation was much less clear than now - there were certainly plausible trajectories that would have absolutely ruled out any hope of in person exams. I suspect the other concern might have been the impact of a long period of non-teaching and the differential impact that would have on different students/schools. In light of all that (and the logistical difficulties organising nationwide exams during covid, and practical difficulties with shielding families/students/etc), I'm not sure cancelling the exams was intrinsically unreasonable. All that said, it's pretty clear that the position we've ended up in is, to put it kindly, "chaos". So it'd hard to imagine there weren't better options than where we've actually ended up.
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carolus
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Post by carolus on Feb 14, 2020 15:58:58 GMT
Estimated outcome statement on site. !
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carolus
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Post by carolus on Feb 10, 2020 18:26:00 GMT
I'm not entirely enthusiastic about Grupeer. I made a small investment about six months ago, and have been withdrawing as loans mature. Things I dislike:
- The company structure - they claim to be an Irish company, and on their website imply this is their main address. But it's pretty clear that they're actually operating through the Latvian company. This seems, if nothing else, a recipe for trouble for investors if something goes wrong. None of the reasons I can think of for them to do this are ones I like much.
- Very little information on the website about who the company is, and no information about who the people behind it are. In fact there is a link to "meet our team" on one page, but it simply redirects to an "about us" page without any serious information. You have to dig somewhat to figure out even what the formal name of the company is.
- They advertise a "stability fund", which is not as you might imagine a provision fund or anything, but rather something that looks like a very strange investment type offering you the chance to "buy a square metre in a real estate property". This puts me in mind of some rather dubious investment types. I don't like at all that this is something they are proposing offering.
- They've bounced around fairly frequently between different banks and payment institutions, of fairly declining respectability. This suggests to me that their old banks may have had reasons for terminating relationships - at a guess AML concerns seem most likely.
- Finally in terms of the mechanics of the platform itself - even the shortest loans are fairly long terms, and there's no SM. Even without the above, I'm not sure it would really appeal to me over other similar platforms.
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carolus
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General EUR P2x Discussion
Envestio
Jan 23, 2020 16:19:26 GMT
via mobile
Post by carolus on Jan 23, 2020 16:19:26 GMT
I think that is evident, not just from minor clues like the fact that the main site and the blog were taken offline at different times, but from the very obvious and glaring issue that the insiders have gone incommunicado. That can't be explained away with talk of a DDoS attacks. Perhaps all of management were in on the scam, or perhaps only some of them were, while others were themselves duped (as Liene Meldere apparently claims). It will require an investigation to verify that. It's weird. Not sure why one of the COO posted youtube video about the investment and even the adviser has met one of the blogger and the blogger's relative and had photos taken. Not weird at all. It helps generate publicity, and good news. And high profile bloggers get more signups, which brings in more money.
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carolus
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General EUR P2x Discussion
Envestio
Jan 22, 2020 18:01:50 GMT
Post by carolus on Jan 22, 2020 18:01:50 GMT
So, in short, it's the investors fault that they're seeking to exit from a platform that offers a buyback guarantee, especially poor form since they're all very busy, and they should be ashamed for having done so as it wasn't meant to be a guarantee. Yet he also is "Looking forward to be your partner of choice in the future as well". What a jackass. Edit: I hear Monethera have also unguaranteed their buyback guarantee. Yes, I was rather "surprised" at the tone of that email. (I'm not involved with the platform myself). On demand Buyback guarantees are, of course, a recipe for disaster - even without a "run" like this, a platform would face demands for buyback as soon as a loan ran into trouble, and no platform is going to have reserves to pay back any loan that defaults, regardless of how many friendly Hong Kong investors(?!) they have supposedly bakcing it.
If Wisefund *are* a legitimate platform, I suppose suspending the buyback guarantee is a necessary step. But then I can see that if you were a setup along the lines of K or E, you might also see suspending BB as a good wheeze.
At least they haven't gone the full Envestio, I suppose. But this and other stuff still has me suspicious of them.
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carolus
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General EUR P2x Discussion
Envestio
Jan 22, 2020 12:50:32 GMT
via mobile
Post by carolus on Jan 22, 2020 12:50:32 GMT
Their main site is hosted at Azure and is offline, but the blog, hosted with a different company (Host Europe GmbH), is online. Does anyone know if they were always like that, or did one of these get moved to different hosting recently? The blog is now down too. In addition, at least one of the people involved in Envestio has deleted all their social media profiles overnight.
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carolus
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Post by carolus on Dec 22, 2019 18:06:28 GMT
I think the whole p2p blogging and posting overlooks a lot how vulnerable p2p can be to money laundering. Compare the regions in which most of the Baltic platforms and their loan originators operate with the respective reports on money laundering as issued from time to time by e.g. the European Central Bank, European Commission, or the IMF. What you’ll find is quite some correlation of the hotspots. I expressly do not want to utter a general suspicion, but the topic needs to be watched more, I think. So thanks to explore2p2 for creating some awareness. It is worth noticing how frequently some platforms have changed bank accounts - likely to be because banks are worried about money laundering etc., and end the relationship.
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carolus
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Post by carolus on Dec 10, 2019 17:06:16 GMT
Seems like it would be very sensible to have a "closed to new investment" or similar subforum. That way it's easier to see at a glance which ones are out of action. Would make it simpler for people to monitor how different platforms are managing it, and keep them out of the way of active platform discussion. I think it would be useful to have it separate from the section for collapsed platforms though, they're (hopefully) very different beasts.
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carolus
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Post by carolus on Dec 6, 2019 9:26:04 GMT
In many ways a shame, but (hopefully) much better to do it like this than the alternatives. Can't say I'm surprised though, the writing has been on the wall for a while.
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carolus
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Post by carolus on Aug 14, 2019 11:55:17 GMT
This has just paid out with a total return of 21.2% over the seven month term. Well done uown.
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carolus
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Post by carolus on Aug 13, 2019 11:33:16 GMT
Has anyone had any success this way around? Or know any S&S providers who will accept an IFISA transfer? So far Fidelity, Vanguard and Charles Stanley have told me they can't accept cash transfers from any IFISA. Are IFISAs a one way ticket? I've had confusion from my broker (Lloyds Sharedealing), when I tried to transfer an IFISA. My IFISA provider was on the list, but the only options to choose which type of ISA it was were "Cash" and "Stocks and Shares". Customer support initially told me that they didn't accept IFISA transfers, until I pointed out the T&Cs said they did.
They told me that I should choose "Cash" and then write on the form that ti was cash from an IFISA. Might be worth seeing what the T&Cs of your broker say.
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carolus
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Post by carolus on Aug 9, 2019 11:15:41 GMT
I will see if we can adjust the update dated 19/06 as it s a bit confusing as it is. No. Just no. The only record lenders have of the history of loans is via the updates. Sounds like you've been caught with your pants down by not doing basic HPI checks on all the vehicles. Don't compound your errors by changing past updates with the benefit of hindsight. I seem to remember another platform thought it would be a good idea to change historic updates to present them in a better light. It didn't end well. No. Just no.
You seem to have gone off rather half-cocked, I'm afraid. As described in the post you have (half) quoted, the 19/06 update on the defaulted loan is simply a copy of the historic updates on the non-defaulted loans. You can see the historic updates on the original loan by navigating to the "Completed Loans" sub-heading, and finding the correct loan.
You would then observe that what has happened is that in the copying process the date of the last update on the original loan was missed off, so that on the default loan it appears superficially as if the date is 19/06
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carolus
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Post by carolus on Aug 6, 2019 9:52:20 GMT
If they had introduced it for new investments only I might have had a bit more faith in the state of their business and future trustworthiness. But as it is, particularly after their crowing about record SM sales I certainly woudn't trust them not to do something similar in future. So I just need to decide how quickly I can be bothered to exit This is key for me. They've just destroyed any trust I have in their process or their willingness to treat investors fairly. AUM for new investments would have been disappointing but understandable. But retroactively changing the terms of the investments then bragging about what good deals are available is just not right.
If I were suspicious I'd say that they have some "friends" investing on favourable terms, just ready to snap up bargains. I don't think I really believe this, but the fact that I can't convince myself to dismiss out of hand the idea that the platform may be deliberately acting against Lenders' interests is pretty damning.
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carolus
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Post by carolus on Jul 31, 2019 21:14:09 GMT
Does any body knows your exact number of shares in UKDPP? The interim share certificate document has been removed from the UKDPP portal, and the nominal value in UKDPP registered is 0.001 in Companies House, while the value transfer from PM is 0.01. Yes, as described in previous updates, they're currently using the property moose platform/technology to record the share ownership, and (previously) to allow the additional investment at the discounted rate. If you log in you can see how many shares you have.
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carolus
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Post by carolus on Jul 31, 2019 17:42:02 GMT
No update this month? Registered office changed and office number not in service??? Report due later this evening, apparently.
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