Once again everyone else getting rich off of our money.
What are the chances of ever seeing a breakdown of what was received and how that money was distributed, £550,000 returned to investors on a building valued at £4 million less than 6 years ago leaves a lot of money unaccounted for.
I'm surprised that there is still only 90 active investors for every loan given their ever-expanding record bar one unresolved loan. Every element of the offering compares favourably to any other P2P lender that I've invested in.
On the question of platform popularity, it is something that has been on my mind for as long as I have been running LandlordInvest. Being in the industry for many years, and watching other platforms coming and going, my view is that popularity is not achieved by the platform that offers the highest returns, has the best or the most experienced management team, or the best customer service/communications, or even access to the best borrowers and/or projects, but mainly how quickly (and frequently) lenders can deploy their funds.
Indeed, frequency of new loans/ability to deploy funds quickly appears to trump every other aspect of a platform's offering and is what attracts lenders most. Countless posts on this forum have reinforced my belief of the same. The ability to deploy funds, coupled with referral schemes/bonuses, appears to have been the winning combination of achieving platform popularity on this forum and generally.
When these things are what appeals lenders most, things like competence of the platform’s management team, returns, risk, customer service/communication, tech or transparency take a back seat.
Further, there has unfortunately been a disconnect between platform popularity and platform sustainability, where many of the popular platforms knew very welhow to attract and deploy funds, but were sadly unable to build a sustainable infrastructure to deal with the popularity, eventually leading to their collapse. Some of these platforms, often those with relatively inexperienced management teams, felt and could not resist the pressure of the increased popularity (they’re humans after all and want to keep their customers happy) and need to quickly deploy funds, therefore often deployed funds to poor borrowers/projects (due to their lack of risk and underwriting experience), leading to high default rates and losses (and eventually collapse).
However, I do believe that is possible to both achieve popularity and build a sustainable platform, that is able to manage increased popularity and activity, and it has been done previously.
Here is Wednesday’s round-up of cases at Blackpool Magistrates Court 17-05-17
Maureen Carpenter, 51, Paul Carpenter, 51, money laundering VAT evasion, Stuart Kane, 34, VAT fraud
Three people have made their first appearances at court charged with fraud.
The trio are involved in the running of Blackpool based company Booze Booze Booze Ltd.
They are Maureen Carpenter, 51, and Paul Carpenter, 51, of Leamington Road,Blackpool, who are accused of money laundering the proceeds of an alleged VAT fraud through the Well Fargo Bank in America.
The are also accused in the fraudulent evasion of VAT estimated at £138,888.
The third person Stuart Kane, 34, also of Leamington Road, Blackpool, faces one charge of VAT fraud.
You'd think that "not drawn down" would mean that the money would have remained in Col's account, so be 100% recoverable, wouldn't you...?
You would but then we already know that the client account doesnt reconcile ...
Interesting.
I was under the misunderstanding that where client accounts and client monies had been polluted then individual loan repayments were not likely (from an ex-IP).
(I clearly should have stayed better informed .)
As a conservative investor with 2/3 cash/undrawn/bling funds, I must say I had been rather hoping to dip my wicket in to the safest loan in p2p.
To the most recent posts, my ~10% recovery is in the same boat (ty for dates of Jack's bank confirmation emails).
As CUK is >15% of my liquid worth, let's continue to keep this from the Mrs .
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Possibly wishful thinking as things do crop up as we saw with TC & MT starting as orderly wind downs*.
I'm now paying 25% trust assets to administrators for a TC loan whose recovery had already been agreed upon beforehand - after about 2 years & whose receivership/platform fees are already being deducted - but whose 12m repayments just happen to overlap with TC hiding behind administrators!
(*tbf OC are doing so & LC unless they start retail again.)
Out of respect to your invaluable work, I shall resist and desist from the comment I'd LOVE to make with regard to the claimant's UBO forcing me to invest legitimate Unb funds in to Connective Lending.
A director of CL isn't exactly what I'd describe as squeaky clean ... "has extensive knowledge within the fintech sector having previously founded and launched a peer-to-peer lending business in 2013".
Bling is also 2/3 of my Collateral 'investments' (altho just property & boats from 2013).
I'm clearly no Albert Einstein
(For completeness, Lendy is by far my best administration - I can't see TC/MT etc surpassing it...Who said p2p would make the banks look like lending genii? )
For the avoidance of doubt I do not give permission for my comments to be used in an uncivil way.
...
The claimant has been seriously ill recently with Covid-19. I understand being obese is a risk factor.
...
Out of respect to your invaluable work, I shall resist and desist from the comment I'd LOVE to make with regard to the claimant's UBO forcing me to invest legitimate Unb funds in to Connective Lending.
Growth Street could have gone so wrong, it was with pure luck investors had their funds returned.
The only effective wind down by choice of any note was Landbay, they chose to shut to retail investors and returned everyone's funds straight away to investors bank accounts.
GS, LB, RS, OC, (LC) have all been pretty elegant imho, altho ‘by choice’ is subjective it’s the outcome that’s most important.
& Property Moose, who rolled the properties into a listed investment.
In addition I’m also in Yielders (ESG/Islamic tilt but same product) & Brickowner might still be going.
I made this my largest asset class despite the more modest income in the belief that as the owners we couldn’t be diddled by dodgy borrowers/platforms or short term refi problems.
However, I managed to invest just before PP fee hike, BP are acquiring our properties under a thesis that was wrong and uown are selling based on regulatory problems (that have not affected other platforms).
I may invest modest amounts in AE/Yielders on attractiveness properties otherwise will move out BP/uo & sell PP anniversaries.
Still a meaningful % of my portfolio but it has not met expectations of ownership, possibly because platforms miscalculated cost structures (PM,PP,BP?), will be interesting to see how AE progress assuming PP will be more aum fund with some developments.