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Post by penguin on Dec 1, 2017 10:18:42 GMT
I'm considering LW as an alternative to Z, now that Z have abandoned their safeguard / insurance. Does anyone have experience of both who could comment here?
Thanks
P
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Post by beeje13 on Dec 1, 2017 14:05:16 GMT
I was going to open an ISA with Zopa, but after the changes to no PF and the stories of losses reported by users on here, I went with LW.
Return is good for the risk:
Prime borrowers
Provision fund
Additional insurance
Downside for me would be the high sale fee, of £20 minimum, although I chose this for the long term so it shouldn't be an issue.
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Post by beeje13 on Dec 1, 2017 17:08:24 GMT
And 5 year rates have just increased to 5.5% from 5.3%.  |
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Post by Matthew on Dec 2, 2017 18:40:50 GMT
I was going to open an ISA with Zopa, but after the changes to no PF and the stories of losses reported by users on here, I went with LW. Return is good for the risk: Prime borrowers Provision fund Additional insurance Downside for me would be the high sale fee, of £20 minimum, although I chose this for the long term so it shouldn't be an issue. Worth noting that we removed the minimum sale fee a while back as it just didn’t make sense, particularly for smaller account sizes. The fee is now just 0.6%, plus any interest shortfall if you’re selling lower rate chunks. Hope this helps.
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zlb
Member of DD Central
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Post by zlb on Dec 2, 2017 19:44:41 GMT
It's an interesting question, 'is it an alternative to Zopa'. It offers up to 3 and up to 5 yr last time I looked. I asked them whether it was possible, if necessary, to withdraw sooner than the stated times. They said yes, but not recommended. Z doesn't have this time limit, but it does seem as if (when looking at Z board) that they want borrowers (who are focusing on monthly defaults) to average out monthly earnings, and treat it as almost an annual product at least. The withdrawal times on Z - they were slow (despite there being a queue of investors). Are they still slow. When one exits the 3yr product at LW - how soon before this deadline does LW stop reinvesting cash etc?
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Post by beeje13 on Dec 2, 2017 19:52:18 GMT
Matthew thanks for that info, I didn't know. I guess there's no negatives for LW then!
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Post by dan1 on Dec 2, 2017 19:56:21 GMT
I was going to open an ISA with Zopa, but after the changes to no PF and the stories of losses reported by users on here, I went with LW. Return is good for the risk: Prime borrowers Provision fund Additional insurance Downside for me would be the high sale fee, of £20 minimum, although I chose this for the long term so it shouldn't be an issue. Worth noting that we removed the minimum sale fee a while back as it just didn’t make sense, particularly for smaller account sizes. The fee is now just 0.6%, plus any interest shortfall if you’re selling lower rate chunks. Hope this helps. Hi Matthew, I wasn't aware the minimum sale fee of £20 had been removed. It may be worth reiterating in the weekly email to encourage existing users to recommend LW to others - the £20 fee was a disincentive to invest in your platform compared to, say, RateSetter or Zopa for P2P newbies. Btw, it still appears on your website, see www.lendingworks.co.uk/peer-to-peer-lending/how-it-works, for example.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 2, 2017 19:58:46 GMT
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Post by Matthew on Dec 2, 2017 20:07:59 GMT
Thanks for flagging that, I’ll make sure this is updated on the website (and T&Cs etc) and we’ll maybe add a section to the weekly email confirming this. We were going to include this as part of the next periodic T&Cs update but I think it makes sense to do now to avoid any confusion. Cheers
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ozboy
Member of DD Central
Mine's a Large One! (Snigger, snigger .......)
Posts: 3,168 
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Post by ozboy on Dec 2, 2017 20:14:06 GMT
Someone who does "The Webby Things" in your organisation requires a smacked bottom Matthew LW.  Apologies, how Politically Incorrect of me - make 'em work through lunch with no break! |
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Post by Matthew on Dec 2, 2017 20:16:48 GMT
It's an interesting question, 'is it an alternative to Zopa'. It offers up to 3 and up to 5 yr last time I looked. I asked them whether it was possible, if necessary, to withdraw sooner than the stated times. They said yes, but not recommended. Z doesn't have this time limit, but it does seem as if (when looking at Z board) that they want borrowers (who are focusing on monthly defaults) to average out monthly earnings, and treat it as almost an annual product at least. The withdrawal times on Z - they were slow (despite there being a queue of investors). Are they still slow. When one exits the 3yr product at LW - how soon before this deadline does LW stop reinvesting cash etc? We always advise lenders against entering into what is a longer term investment where we feel they are looking for an almost instant access product, for example if they need the funds on a specific date within the next 12 months. The same would apply to stocks and shares where investing for such a short time period means you’ll be attempting to time the market, which is fairly universally accepted as risky. There is technically nothing stopping you selling loans after any period of time though. On the tech side, the process is extremely quick i.e. less than 60 seconds in most cases, provided lender funds are available to match you out. Withdrawals are paid as faster payments so all in all it should be same day from end to end.
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Post by Matthew on Dec 2, 2017 20:22:10 GMT
Someone who does "The Webby Things" in your organisation requires a smacked bottom Matthew LW. Apologies, how Politically Incorrect of me - make 'em work through lunch with no break! I suppose whether it’s updated on Monday or not will let you know how that conversation went...
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macq
Member of DD Central
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Post by macq on Dec 2, 2017 22:49:36 GMT
Someone who does "The Webby Things" in your organisation requires a smacked bottom Matthew LW. Apologies, how Politically Incorrect of me - make 'em work through lunch with no break! I suppose whether it’s updated on Monday or not will let you know how that conversation went... you mean they get Sunday off! Could there not be a cap on moving funds from a normal account to the ISA account?(or free )
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Post by Matthew on Dec 3, 2017 12:35:55 GMT
I suppose whether it’s updated on Monday or not will let you know how that conversation went... you mean they get Sunday off! Could there not be a cap on moving funds from a normal account to the ISA account?(or free ) Yeah we're very generous like that. Seems like a tough crowd on here! We did consider removing fees for loan sales for the purpose of transferring to an ISA account, and I'm still not opposed to that, but to be honest having spoken to large numbers of lenders there wasn't as big a demand as we expected - most investors were more interested in transferring in existing ISAs from other ISA providers, so we focused on that for launch. Similarly we haven't yet released the option to reinvest repayments from Classic to ISA, as the demand doesn't seem to be there though we'll likely still release that anyway for those that would use it.
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nairda
Member of DD Central
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Post by nairda on Dec 3, 2017 13:13:40 GMT
Mrs N and I both have substantial sums in our Lending Works IFISAs and I am quite happy to keep it there. How safe is LW? I don't know but the sparsity of comments on this forum indicates to me that most people are quite happy.
As for Zopa, for the second time I have withdrawn all available funds and Mrs N is running down her 2017 IFISA already. I think Zopa has completely lost the plot.
The worst thing about LW is that this forum is so booooooring! But then I suppose boring is good.
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