Am I investing or just giving it away?

Glad I,m not the only one seeing this, according to Zopa its just a dip and things are on target, apparently it goes up and down month to month.. So why am I worried.  Well 2/3rds of my money is still under the protection fund, income returns has dropped to 2% over the last three months with defaults in plus and core, if it wasnt for the protection fund I would be making a loss now.   I have a good buffer though from years of lending so I wont be making a loss overall but the trend is very worrying and for the first time in 6 years I have turned off auto-lend and pulling money out placing it in lending works which is offering 6% protected right now.  

Now it may be Zopa are right and things will even out at 4%, but while defaults are 80% of my interest every month and increasing I shall continue to pull money out, may be things will be better in Feb..

Has Assetz had any defaults where investors have lost money?  Or are the defaults still working through the system?

Thanks.  Look forward to your analysis 

To be Honest, this is what I can say about the default rates between core and plus

Since I started selling after 8 months of investing, in the 12 month periods of investing, I have a total 12 loans default in the Zopa Core market, that's 12/827 loans, default rate of 1.45%, Looking into Plus, that's  27/1107 loans, 2.4%.

However, my actual Zopa Plus  default rate in terms of value is 3.64% according to my all time loan book and I am expecting 5.5% default in the plus.

To be honest, i wish zopa just launch zopa E instead which only focus in the e market. if you look at my all time loan book default rate, I only had 3 defaults from 76 E loans for active investing for 8 months.  the investor rate is 26%+

Hi adrian77 ,

I'm not sure of some things can you just clarify a few things or I can understand.

1. Which investments are we talking here - Invest/ISA both
2. When did the investments start - eg How mature are they 1,2,3..5 years.
3. Are the losses in high value loans or all in say £10 ones - from above looks like £10 or less.
4. Are you relending on the products monthly.
5. What is wd? (unless it means withdrawn)

One of the reasons for these questions is that most of us on here are aware of some seemingly increased default levels, me included, but many of us are also aware of the way the defaults can in fact manifest themselves at the start of an investment - well after 4 months at least that is. When the investment is in its young phase defaults can tend to come in quite fast - still usually fitting in with projections though. Also there is a large amount lent out all at once whereas when the investment settles down to relend at a much slower rate then the defaults will tend to slow down too. (Well I hope that's what happens - previous experience does seem to corroborate this but past results cannot necessarily be relied upon). 

So for me my Invest is very Mature from a Plus mode and whilst there are defaults they are few and far between compared to my less mature ISA investment. I am picking up a raft of them in the Core market (rather more lent on that though than on Plus) but I am still on target for 4.5-5% return across my whole. If I were to cut and run now though I would expect that return to be somewhat depleted as I think most of Zopa's projections are based on a 5 year models rather than more short term. I have been investing since 2006 through some tough times and have quite a few defaults from Pre-Safeguard times so I guess I am holding my nerve somewhat.

Whether you could ever hold Zopa to a court judgment in the case of losses anyone may incur is debatable. To be fair I have been very critical of a number of areas of Zopa myself but apart from one issue with the Classic transfer to ISA allegedly fee free but not necessarily transparently fee free.

Not sure any of this helps you though but perhaps you might need to take a longer term view than perhaps the first 10/11 days of any given month as above. Unless of course you figures have extrapolated out the true figures to at least 12 months

(edit:)
I thought it might be useful to share some of my figures in my ISA side since June when I started investing in ISA.

Investment was lent out slowly (£10 where possible) from Jun-Oct
In same period int total was £215 slowly at first and building.
For next 2 months to Dec interest built further by a further £144
In Jan,Feb interest was £76 and £70 respectively but for these months the defaults started at £49 and then £48
In Mar about £70 of interest was delivered and this time only 19.58 was defaulted.
April is still young as yet but I have a further default of £9.33 and more Int of approx £46. (Some of that comes from new classic SG that was transferred in in Feb)

It's obviously not clear as yet that the defaults have stabilised the rest of April will tell and the investments are not exactly mature as such. Most if not all of my defaults are in Core rather than in Plus but then my investment here is skewed 85% Core to 15% Plus (Not including the new Classic SG parts). 

(edit2)
I thought it might be interesting to check defaults rate as well. So just checked by both value of default outstanding and by no loans defaulted and got following rates so far.

ISA Plus = 0.78%
ISA core = 0.70%

Not sure if that's good but I'm comfortable with that so far.

In all my time since 2006 I have never removed any funds but not sure that's relevant, I just love the relend option ;-).