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Post by BrianC on Oct 6, 2017 6:31:23 GMT
I’ve moaned a few times before on various threads about my terrible returns with Zopa plus. Today I just got a quote for selling out my Plus investments.
Background first. This time 6 months ago I had approx...
Plus £14k Access £5k Classic £1k
My Plus loans were extremely well diversified. I’d built that total up over many months by generally investing £100-£300 at a time daily whenever my total unlent was <£1K. I’d say 90%+ of my loans were just £10 and none bigger than £20. My current average is £9.32 per loan.
I’ve been making losses now for the last 3 months and my missed payments and defaulters are still increasing. I’ve been withdrawing all repayments from Zopa on a weekly basis for a while now and currently am down to £11K in Plus.
To sell out of Plus today I would receive after fees less than £10k. I’d lose almost £1000. That would be due to any loans in arrears not being able to be sold. Yes there’s a good chance I’d get some of that back eventually but on my past performance I doubt it would be much.
I’ve been in Zopa since 2007 and for the first 8 years invested more modest sums. If all my Plus loans in arrears default and never pay it would wipe out 75-80% of my entire lifetime Zopa earnings. Well done Zopa. Great product 👍🏻
To date I’ve not received a single penny from any defaulter. What the hell do Zopa do to recover this lost money? It seems nothing. I haven’t been able to see my statements for months. Zopa have removed their safeguard provision fund shifting all risk on to investors. Zopa rates are worse than their competitors.
Is Zopa dead? Have they taken their eye off the ball?
I’ll continue to withdraw all repayments.
R.I.P. Zopa
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Post by BrianC on Oct 6, 2017 6:45:53 GMT
Also, to contrast...
I now have £40K in RS. Built up over the last 14 months when I opened my account. Earnings £2200, Losses nil, working provision fund, working website, better rates.
I emailed Zopa a few weeks ago saying how unhappy I was with my Plus returns and the lack of statements. I accept the losses are a result of ‘investing’ but there is no excuse whatsoever for the statements. I asked for a fee free sellout of my Plus loans due to their inability to provide up to date statements. They refused. I may complain to the FCA next as I genuinely believe a financial product not providing statements is unacceptable.
Sorry if above 2 posts is rants lol
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Post by newlender on Oct 6, 2017 6:59:02 GMT
It looks as if Statements has been repaired up to the end of August. I can now see my defaults for each month and the total earnings seem to be correct. Z+ defaults are wiping out much of my profit as has been said here, but I'm hoping for better days as my portfolio is quite young. Certainly no more new cash will be put into Z+ by me and I'm moving all my repayments into the ISA (Core). When I've got to £20k new money invested in the ISA I'll just let the Investing side mount up in Holding until April 6 next year.
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Post by BrianC on Oct 6, 2017 7:06:09 GMT
My statement for August is also correct. My last statement transaction date is September 4th. That’s over a month ago which I think isn’t good enough. Maybe I’ve got OCD and check my statements too often lol. I’ve never tried Core as Plus has put me off Zopa for now. My worry is Core returns will disappoint similarly to Plus. I really hope I’m wrong. Maybe I’m just an unlucky example but with a well diversified Plus loan book I find it hard to believe it’s just me.
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ashtondav
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Post by ashtondav on Oct 6, 2017 7:25:47 GMT
£76,000 start of August, £70,000 end of August invested across +, core, classic. Interest in August £368. Seems about right. £7 of the interest was repayments from defaults.
Because of the lower projected returns I have withdrawn, since early August £10k, and diversified into RS, AC and FS. I intend to continue that process. Prior to the interest rate warning I had been increasing my Zopa investments.
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r00lish67
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Post by r00lish67 on Oct 6, 2017 8:41:38 GMT
£76,000 start of August, £70,000 end of August invested across +, core, classic. Interest in August £368. Seems about right. £7 of the interest was repayments from defaults. Because of the lower projected returns I have withdrawn, since early August £10k, and diversified into RS, AC and FS. I intend to continue that process. Prior to the interest rate warning I had been increasing my Zopa investments. You're ok with losing £6k of capital in a month? I'm probably misunderstanding your first sentence! I didn't want to chime in again about Zopa as I take the point about variability of returns across investors and the potential bias it gives to how the Z+ product is perceived to perform, but the other day when I logged into my account for my monthly round-up, I have yet again lost money in the month of September. Except this time, Zopa can't even report to me that that's the case. My investment is trivial but this is the only platform where I consistently 'lose', and the only auto-select product on this forum that I can recall of late where we've seen several posters talking about actually losing money, so I can't help obsessing slightly. Considering we're not yet in a economic downturn, this to me indicates a pretty astonishing level of poor performance. Edit: A quick flail around the entire loanbook reveals that that's stopped updating as of 1st September too, so we can't really prove anything currently. I take this as a golden opportunity to make an array of statements based on gut and with lashings of all sorts of bias and hearsay If only to encourage Zopa to get their act together!
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Post by propman on Oct 6, 2017 8:43:31 GMT
I’ve moaned a few times before on various threads about my terrible returns with Zopa plus. Today I just got a quote for selling out my Plus investments. Background first. This time 6 months ago I had approx... Plus £14k Access £5k Classic £1k My Plus loans were extremely well diversified. I’d built that total up over many months by generally investing £100-£300 at a time daily whenever my total unlent was <£1K. I’d say 90%+ of my loans were just £10 and none bigger than £20. My current average is £9.32 per loan. I’ve been making losses now for the last 3 months and my missed payments and defaulters are still increasing. I’ve been withdrawing all repayments from Zopa on a weekly basis for a while now and currently am down to £11K in Plus. To sell out of Plus today I would receive after fees less than £10k. I’d lose almost £1000. That would be due to any loans in arrears not being able to be sold. Yes there’s a good chance I’d get some of that back eventually but on my past performance I doubt it would be much. I’ve been in Zopa since 2007 and for the first 8 years invested more modest sums. If all my Plus loans in arrears default and never pay it would wipe out 75-80% of my entire lifetime Zopa earnings. Well done Zopa. Great product 👍🏻 To date I’ve not received a single penny from any defaulter. What the hell do Zopa do to recover this lost money? It seems nothing. I haven’t been able to see my statements for months. Zopa have removed their safeguard provision fund shifting all risk on to investors. Zopa rates are worse than their competitors. Is Zopa dead? Have they taken their eye off the ball? I’ll continue to withdraw all repayments. R.I.P. Zopa I have had a similar if less dramatic result much worse than the new projections in Plus. I striated my Plus loans and recorded total interest earned, defaults/settled/demised, arrangements/collections & other loans in arrears foreach market. The only market where the first 2 categories exceeded interest was the E market with C1 disappointing but positive. THis suggests that Core seems a much lower risk product.
Has anyone else done a similar analysis of their loan books as there is quite a variety between the 3 books analysed I might not be representative despite £13k in Plus (reduced from about £15k). WOuld be very interested in other's experience.
- PM
PS while I understand youtr comments on RS, subject to delivering there predicted drop in defaults for 2017, the PF would have run dry given that there are cumulative credit fees received of only £3.6m more than defaults to date to the end of 2016 (wopuld be very negative to the end July 2016). So the continued pay outs are dependent on continuing lending. The projections are dependent on significant recoveries from previous defaults. THere is signs that there more recent lending is delivering the reduced defaults, but I think that they are more exposed than Zopa to a downturn especially with property lending.
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ashtondav
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Post by ashtondav on Oct 6, 2017 10:52:33 GMT
£76,000 start of August, £70,000 end of August invested across +, core, classic. Interest in August £368. Seems about right. £7 of the interest was repayments from defaults. Because of the lower projected returns I have withdrawn, since early August £10k, and diversified into RS, AC and FS. I intend to continue that process. Prior to the interest rate warning I had been increasing my Zopa investments. You're ok with losing £6k of capital in a month? I'm probably misunderstanding your first sentence! I didn't want to chime in again about Zopa as I take the point about variability of returns across investors and the potential bias it gives to how the Z+ product is perceived to perform, but the other day when I logged into my account for my monthly round-up, I have yet again lost money in the month of September. Except this time, Zopa can't even report to me that that's the case. My investment is trivial but this is the only platform where I consistently 'lose', and the only auto-select product on this forum that I can recall of late where we've seen several posters talking about actually losing money, so I can't help obsessing slightly. Considering we're not yet in a economic downturn, this to me indicates a pretty astonishing level of poor performance. Edit: A quick flail around the entire loanbook reveals that that's stopped updating as of 1st September too, so we can't really prove anything currently. I take this as a golden opportunity to make an array of statements based on gut and with lashings of all sorts of bias and hearsay If only to encourage Zopa to get their act together! No, I withdrew the £6,000. The point I was making is that my loan book is performing as expected but that I am making withdrawals because of the lowered rates.
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Post by dingdong on Oct 9, 2017 14:46:51 GMT
People really need to get used to the idea that higher rates equals higher risk.
Across the whole of P2P people are not prepared for the inevitable shock to the system when a property downturn or the next recession hits. I can only imagine the reaction when people realise their ISA's aren't safe.
Just withdrawing money from the Access fund currently takes more than 20 days and that's before any rush to the exit.
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ashtondav
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Post by ashtondav on Oct 9, 2017 17:18:03 GMT
I've been with Zopa since 2005, so have significant experience of p2p during a recession - the worst since the 30s.
Compared to my equity portfolio it was a comforting experience. VERY COMFORTING. Yes if you scamper for the exits when it hits the fan you'll get hurt, but that's the same in equities.
My worry is not the Zopa, RS and FC platforms, but the weaker, smaller platforms with less expertise. Many will go on under. I am already withdrawing from FS and only dabbling with AC Quick Access and rebalancing my investments to the three platforms mentioned.
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angrysaveruk
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Post by angrysaveruk on Oct 9, 2017 19:14:42 GMT
I am lucky in that I only made a small loss in Plus (about 1 or 2%). I am keeping my funds in Classic that are covered by the provision fund and letting them run off over time. Overall I have earnt the best part of 10k in interest with Zopa and I have been happy with the product but right now I am alot less bullish about P2P than I was 3 years ago and I am running down my holdings on all platforms.
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invester
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Post by invester on Oct 10, 2017 7:21:00 GMT
Same kind of experience for me, coming up to about a year in Z I think and my current return is just under 2%. And this is off several thousand (invested under £1k each time to get the diversification). I'm not putting in any more and given that I still have defaults pending my returns could actually go negative soon.
Just don't see how it competes with Ratesetter.
I can only presume if the performance is this bad, either they are not charging the correct rate for the loans, getting in the wrong type of people commensurate for the rate or are just terrible at administering them. I suspect the first two reasons, and possibly a third with institutional lenders jumping the queue. I also believe the latter option would allow their statistics to be accurate (the distribution of returns looks highly suspect to me).
Harsh lesson learned, but for a newbie IMO just getting the top paying current accounts would be smarter strategy than going with Zopa.
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r00lish67
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Post by r00lish67 on Oct 10, 2017 8:56:59 GMT
Just for some balance, is there someone here who's had a Z+ return even vaguely in line with expected returns for the month of September 2017?
NB: Only including those whose accounts have been operating for at least 6 months to avoid the honeymoon effect, and I'm only interested in Z+ returns, not core, classic etc.
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ashtondav
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Post by ashtondav on Oct 10, 2017 10:32:19 GMT
As replied earlier YES! In fact I've had expected returns sInce I first invested in plus. I would imagine my average investment has been £30,000 in plus in £10 loans. See my post above for interest in August ( although this includes Classic the size of return means plus must be functioning for me.) As I said in that post I am now withdrawing (not selling) funds because of zopa' lower future projected returns.
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r00lish67
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Post by r00lish67 on Oct 10, 2017 11:22:07 GMT
As replied earlier YES! In fact I've had expected returns sInce I first invested in plus. I would imagine my average investment has been £30,000 in plus in £10 loans. See my post above for interest in August ( although this includes Classic the size of return means plus must be functioning for me.) As I said in that post I am now withdrawing (not selling) funds because of zopa' lower future projected returns. Thanks for info, although I was asking about September only, and Z+ only (I'm not sure how easy it is to delineate the two if you have both though). Are you able to see what your Z+ only returns for Sept are?
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