Am I investing or just giving it away?

Yes, in reality, it's a tricky one to deal with.  I wonder if we can deduce anything from considering the ratio between "irrecoverable losses" and "interest received" in our respective 17/18 tax statements? 

In my ickle Z+ account for example, my loan interest received was £86.21 and my irrecoverable loans totalled £179.01.

So, in my rather extreme case (perhaps) my losses were 208% of my income received. 

My 2017/18 statement shows losses as 55.66% of interest (and capital recovered as 1.54% of bad debt). By comparison, my 2016/17 statement shows losses as 8.87% of interest, but pls bear in mind I only started with Zopa in Sept 2016

I think in %age loss terms I can beat everyone

interest 0.01
capital 0.03

losses 2.15

Dave

No
5 loans from 2009 to 2011 - 18 quid left outstanding

(can't believe I just used next years interest in electricity to check that )

Dave

My experience of Zopa has been as follows:

In 2016 tested the waters (it had a provision fund back then) 
Started well and was getting 6-7%. So ramped this up to £100k during which time the provision fund was removed.
Late 2017 experienced first loss making month. Whereas my other P2P accounts were doing fine. 
This was about the same time as some financial new sites were getting worried about levels of personal lending. I decided to withdraw the £100k ASAP
Problem is a few £k can't be withdrawn - I guess late payments.
This is what is left in my account and now results in dire performance. However, overall i got about 5% returns once selling fees accounted for.
Worry is that the loans I was unable to sell may all default and wipe-out the 5% return!

My concern is that many investors were attracted to P2P due to v low trad savings rates. 
If Zopa only returns a patchy 3% and then BOE raises rates such that someone like Atombank can offer 2.5% riskfree and no exit fees, who is going to bother with zopa?

IDK...  I've been with Zopa for years and recently since the ending of the provision fund have been concerned about the losses yet my money is still growing steadily at about 4.5%.   I think one can become pre-ocupied with the short term losses and not looking at the overall picture..   The vid (Understanding your returns) on zopa explains things well..

First you have to have good diversification, I wouldn't dream of investing less than 1k in core or plus, that spreads the risk.  Second, this is for me a five year investment, pulling out early would result in losses or a reduction of interest earned.  I really think people who want short term should look elsewhere..  

Whats made things look worse on my accounts is the opening of the isa and dumping in several k of new money, the first few months saw no defaults and hight returns but then the defaults came flying in knocking out the %  However because there will be higher defaults in the first year and I think 2017 probably wasn't the best year for lending and  a lower interest rate is to be expected, as the loans re-invest and time marches on it should all even out... 

The second issue is as the classic account winds down and plus increases I was seeing some high defaults in some months which initially looked worrying and made me think perhaps zopa wasn't vetting some of the loans properly..  I also wonder if Zopa are seriously active in trying to get money back from defaulters..  But despite all this month on month I make money and Zopa to date has always performed well long term..

I am however reducing my money in Zopa and diversifying it a little as I can get a protected 6% in other platforms spreading the risk even more... I continue to evaluate zopa on a month by month basis and while the returns are lower than a few years ago they are steady and I sill think its a good long term platform for now....

The Zopa plus returms are a joke

here is my latest summary



Investment total (1st April 2018) £904.73

Interest earned from borrowers £10.27

Fees: Fee for selling loans - £1.63

Bad debt: New defaults - £153.02

Bad debt: Repayments from defaults £3.62



I am losing money month after month and at this rate I will lose well over a thousand pounds and my entire remaining capital balance. Today is the 23rd so since the !st of the month I have had £153.02 bad debts on capital of £904.73! If this is their "plus" account I sure would hate a negative one!

I accept there was an element of risk in this product and that my return might have been less than projected but this is ridiculous and I feel Zopa have not been exactly honest regarding their projected rates...