Am I investing or just giving it away?

I have started to waver in recent months also and a loss of trust in Zopa is mainly to blame.

I pretty much had trouble free investing for years up until November last year with minimal losses and good returns each year. Once we hit November, I mysteriously started picking up a large number of defaults. Just as Zopa was winding down the safeguard fund, I started picking up the tab on a load of borrowers who have impeccable timing.
Also the removal of the safeguard fund now means that Zopa have zero risk in the loans they manage. When I asked them what internal controls they had to ensure that my investments were being handled sensibly, I was met with silence. People investing with them should be aware that you are basically relying on their honesty to look after your money (and everyone in the financial sector is honest).

I feel that Zopa has strayed to far from their original mission statement, getting a good deal for everyone seems to be off the table and now its more about getting a good deal for Zopa. They have relied for too long  on rock bottom interest rates to keep investors ploughing money in.

I haven't pulled the plug yet, but I haven't made any money on my investment recently either so am watching my account very closely at the moment.

A lot of this is anecdotal. Is actual bad debt worse than forecast bad debt? I can’t recall seeing the stats.

I think you might be being a bit unfair to PP TBH.  With PP you lose 2% or 2.5% on the primary and secondary markets respectively at the time of investment; it'll take months of rental dividend to re-pay this so PP will look awful in the short term but should perform up towards the indicated dividend in the long term.  Then you also need to factor in that this is a total return product and you won't realise any of this capital gain until the 5th year if you exit and the property market is in good shape, or the property has strong demand for you to sell at a profit on the secondary market.  Then factor in that on PP you are earning dividends and capital gains that may be tax free if you're within their respective allowances.  PP is an equity investment, the likes of Zopa are debt investments; quite different beasts.

The figures I gave do not include any fees as I've not made any new investments with them for 6 months, this is actual returns. Also when evaluating investments you need to take into account the fees the platform charge else it is not a like for like comparison against a platform that doesn't charge fees at all or charge them in the same way. It's still the worst performing and IMO the most risky out of all my investments as it requires people wanting to buy my shares in order for me to get the money back, at least with P2P lending the repayments will keep coming in (minus any defaults) so you will be much more likely to get the money back should something bad happen. If property partner hit hard times an no one wants to buy your shares you can say good bye too every penny you have with them.

Well for the first time ever (and I’m a founder member) I’ve made a monthly loss. Last month, on my £40k I made -£14 interest. Withdrawing repayments will continue.

Agree seeing the same with my own returns. Difficult to see how their ambitions of a big successful bank, will successfully materialise if they're skinning lenders. The market is plenty crowded with those kind of banks. Hopefully they'll get their act together asap

1st time poster, long time reader

Same here, first monthly loss, but £350 on £70k (£550 interest, £900 losses). I was already withdrawing repayments, have now put in first Sell order having decided will be better off elsewhere even after taking the 1% hit. Wasn't due simply to April's loss, but due to bad debt being in excess of 60% for each of the last 7 months.