Ratesetter Borrowers

Where do you see this, my contracts give no info on loan size, only term, rate and whether secured or not.

Same for me although I only have 3 and 5 year loans out there and no 1 year bonds.

I've never had a 1yr contract, so can't examine the detail, but maybe it needs additional terms to take into account the effect on that contract of the borrower's actions w.r.t. the 1 month contracts that also make up their loan, and the synthetic contract for up to 24 months that includes the 1 year bond? Detail that would not be needed for the 36 month and longer products as these are currently matched 1:1 between borrowers and lenders, or for the 1 month product which does not itself depend on the performance of any other contract.

e.g. if the borrower defaults 6 months into an 18 or 24 month loan, it would presumably be necessary to trigger a payment from the provision fund to the 1 year lender(s) despite the fact that no payment was yet due on THAT contract.

I suppose that putting a property up as security is not quite the same as lending for a property which may be what is occurring.
Perhaps above a certain loan amount, security is required and for most people, the only 6 figure security that could be put up would be their home.

Just copied this from their FAQ:

Who am I lending to?


RateSetter is an anonymous service. The only details you will have about the Borrower is a reference number and the details of how much money they want to borrow, the APR they want to pay and the length of their loan. All credit, affordability and suitability checking is done by RateSetter, and is not displayed on our website.

Some other peer-to-peer sites let you judge the potential borrowers so you can make a decision about a specific borrower or types of borrowers. At RateSetter we do the work for you – we take borrower applications, vet them, and take a Credit Rate from successful applicants which grows the Provision Fund. We think this is a simple way of managing risk. The borrowers who are accepted are creditworthy and can afford the loan - what is sometimes called "prime". The borrowers are usually looking for a loan for a car, a home improvement or a big ticket expense or investment. We have some basic rules: borrowers must be over a certain age, have a regular monthly income, and have a sound credit history. The vast majority of loans are unsecured but we also accept some secured loans which would mean a stringent verification process. We carefully examine their credit file and circumstance to understand their financial position and ability to service the loan. We will often ask for confirmation or proof of certain details. We don’t judge simply on the basis of how much they want to borrow: it is very important to understand whether the loan is affordable for the borrower in the context of his or her monthly outgoings. This stringent process means that we actually decline the majority of applications. Those who are accepted are exactly the people that our lenders would expect: creditworthy borrowers who can sensibly afford a loan.


The words used are "borrower" and although you tend to read it as an individual, you could substitute company and it would still read OK.
It doesn't mention companies, nor does it exclude them so none the wiser really.

Ok, so we assume (because of what RS' website implies) that we are lending to individuals. Why doesn't RS say explicitly that they only lend to individuals? An individual loan of high 6 figures in size is pretty punchy... How do I get more comfortable that they know what they're doing with our money - I mean the track record's great, but it sounds like they're behaving like a bank without the regulation?