bigfoot12
Member of DD Central
Posts: 1,817
Likes: 816
|
Post by bigfoot12 on Nov 22, 2018 17:23:18 GMT
I like many things about octopus choice, but the minimum level of diversification of 10% is too high for me, given this is a low yielding investment. octopusjoe is there any chance that this could be reduced, or ideally user selectable, accepting that money not earn interest if already at the maximum percentage of available loans. A choice of 1,2,5,10% would be perfect. I have removed a significant amount from my account, but if the maximum exposure to a single loan was closer to 2% I would return it.
|
|
liso
Member of DD Central
Posts: 389
Likes: 394
|
Post by liso on Nov 22, 2018 17:59:59 GMT
When I began investing with OC I transferred in funds in large chunks but was uncomfortable with the amounts that were being invested in individual loans. So I withdrew most of my funds and began again, drip feeding my account regularly.
So far, this has worked well. Currently my maximum exposure to any one loan is 1.8%, and the remainder are lower, very many below 1%. My funds available for withdrawal are around 99%.
|
|
Steerpike
Member of DD Central
Posts: 1,961
Likes: 1,680
|
Post by Steerpike on Nov 22, 2018 19:56:08 GMT
I transferred £10k this week and within 24 hours I was invested in 71 loans with the maximum being below £180, so perhaps they have improved their system or have more loans available now.
|
|
|
Post by oxford101 on Nov 24, 2018 13:40:20 GMT
I have used Octopus for over 12 months and am still dissatisfied with the lack of diversity - having raised this subject with them on a number of occasions. I now have a growing number of loans that are in excess of 7% of my portfolio and will not put any more funds with this company useless they can fix this issue.
However, there is a report just published by Orca that provides good, and positive, insight into Octopus Choice.
But, for a 4% return, the lack of loan diversity remains a major stumbling block.
|
|
|
Post by octopusjoe on Nov 27, 2018 16:09:35 GMT
Hi bigfoot12, liso, Steerpike and@oxford101, thanks for your feedback. This has been raised before and we of course understand that investors want as much diversification as possible. As noticed by Steerpike, we have made some upgrades to our system in the last few weeks, meaning that each individual investment can now be diversified across up to 60 loans, if they're available. We are already seeing investors' profiles diversify to a greater extent. That said, the maximum amount of any investment in one loan still sits at 10%. We're confident that this provides a sufficiently strong level of diversification. However, this is a point we know some investors feel strongly about, and rest assured, I pass on all these comments to the whole team, so thanks again for the feedback on this!
|
|
greatmarko
Member of DD Central
Posts: 343
Likes: 373
|
Post by greatmarko on Nov 27, 2018 22:54:08 GMT
When I began investing with OC I transferred in funds in large chunks but was uncomfortable with the amounts that were being invested in individual loans. So I withdrew most of my funds and began again, drip feeding my account regularly. Sadly, this isn't as easy to with their IFISA. Transferring in an existing ISA by "drip feeding" in multiple smaller ISA transfers in just isn't practical (and would likely annoy your existing ISA provider with numerous transfer requests!), and as the OC IFISA isn't flexible, you can't simply withdraw and slowly drip-feed in again in smaller chunks. My advice to anyone thinking of transferring in an existing ISA to OC's IFISA: Don't! - it's just too risky in terms of diversification across loans if you transfer a big lump sum in in one go. I really wish OC would introduce a way that your loan holdings are automatically and regularly "rebalanced" across all open loans. Following my ISA transfer in early this year, I can do nothing but wait for the initial dozen or so loans my lump sum was split across (in larger chunks than I would like) to repay, in order to improve my diversification - just got to hope nope of them go belly up in the meantime!
|
|
bigfoot12
Member of DD Central
Posts: 1,817
Likes: 816
|
Post by bigfoot12 on Nov 28, 2018 1:22:32 GMT
...we have made some upgrades to our system in the last few weeks, meaning that each individual investment can now be diversified across up to 60 loans, if they're available. We are already seeing investors' profiles diversify to a greater extent. Thank you for replying. What I would like is a feature so that I can choose, say, 2%, and if a suitable number of loans are not available, some money is left behind (earning no interest) until loans are available. If you introduced that, I would increase my investment by a factor of 10. And I would also be happy to recommend you to friends and family. Edit: Changed to make my point clearer.
|
|
bigfoot12
Member of DD Central
Posts: 1,817
Likes: 816
|
Post by bigfoot12 on Feb 13, 2019 13:29:10 GMT
Where are these 60 loans? Rather than diversifying, my investments are increasingly more and more concentrated into same existing large investments.... Is this your new money that, or are existing loans maturing and getting put into loans you already hold? I have been adding some every couple of months and haven't had a problem. (Although my investment would be several times larger if I was confident that diversification wasn't an issue.)
|
|
|
Post by Ace on Oct 7, 2019 7:55:53 GMT
Hi treetophugger, I'm not with OC, so can't answer your question directly, but... If you like the concept of OC you might like to take a look at Loanpad. It seems like a similar concept to me, but has the advantage that your funds are rebalanced across all loans each day, so instant diversification. Some loans are later tranches of existing loans (currently 35 loans, of which 17 are unique). Also the LTVs are much lower than on OC.
|
|
liso
Member of DD Central
Posts: 389
Likes: 394
|
Post by liso on Oct 7, 2019 16:48:48 GMT
Three months ago I withdrew all available funds, needing the money for other purposes. Recently I began lending again and made two small deposits at weekly intervals, all well diversified into very small chunks.
My bigger problem is with the default rate. Currently I have around 35% of my investment in default, originating from loans I made several months ago. Until OC demonstrate they can achieve good recovery I will not be investing further.
|
|
bigfoot12
Member of DD Central
Posts: 1,817
Likes: 816
|
Post by bigfoot12 on Oct 14, 2019 7:25:35 GMT
"So that you don’t become over-concentrated in a few loans, we may periodically balance out your portfolio if more than 10% is held within a single loan."
Anyone have evidence of the "balancing" taking place?
So they start with the least funded loan, proportionally, and then overtime re-balance so that exposure is 10% per loan.
That's what they say on the site anyway.
The loan book is a bit hard to navigate, if I could download it I would be able to see this, but I can't. And I can't sort by loan fraction size. With your 100% allocation you are in a good place to see this. If I were you I would phone them. I am slowly moving away from P2P. If I had a few hundred pounds to invest I would avoid P2P completely. Three months ago I withdrew all available funds, needing the money for other purposes. Recently I began lending again and made two small deposits at weekly intervals, all well diversified into very small chunks. My bigger problem is with the default rate. Currently I have around 35% of my investment in default, originating from loans I made several months ago. Until OC demonstrate they can achieve good recovery I will not be investing further. 35% seem meaningless from your example. Maybe you had £10,000 in with a 0.35% default rate, which you withdrew and then deposited £40 twice. Your now >30% default rate wouldn't really be a fair reflection of OC, would it?
|
|
liso
Member of DD Central
Posts: 389
Likes: 394
|
Post by liso on Oct 14, 2019 9:28:32 GMT
Fair enough bigfoot12. I should have been clearer with my numbers. Doesn't negate my central position though, that my defaults have risen to an unacceptable level, and OC have not (yet?) demonstrated any meaningful recovery.
|
|
bigfoot12
Member of DD Central
Posts: 1,817
Likes: 816
|
Post by bigfoot12 on Oct 14, 2019 10:04:09 GMT
Fair enough bigfoot12 . I should have been clearer with my numbers. Doesn't negate my central position though, that my defaults have risen to an unacceptable level, and OC have not (yet?) demonstrated any meaningful recovery. I agree that that loans on hold seem to be rising (and that is worrying me a little), but the statistics would seem to refute your second point. From OC 88% of loans on hold are returned to normal within 90 days. And in 2018 6 loans were passed to collection with all capital and interest recovered. Some interest has been lost in 2019 from the 1 recovery (as of June 2019), but all capital was recovered. We await the next update. I'm significantly reducing my P2P holdings, but so far I've reduced OC a bit less and bit more slowly than most of the rest.
|
|
macq
Member of DD Central
Posts: 1,924
Likes: 1,191
|
Post by macq on Oct 14, 2019 10:36:36 GMT
i have the following observation on defaults with OC - i look about Once a month over the last year funds available to withdraw have dropped as low as 82% and as high as 95% and at the moment stand just under 90% (first 18 months it was nearly always 99 - 100%) what i have noticed is say over 4 - 6 months i have had from 3 to i think 11 and back to 6 in collection and each month a few late or overterm and from the drop down boxes on each loan there is usually a line about lawyers,agents etc. What i have noticed is that some loans have been collected and taken out of collection to be replaced by others hence the percentage of funds available changing and the problem loans changing in my account.So it would seem they are sorting the problems but replacing with new late's etc It maybe a feature of the withdrawals system but everything gets flagged from late up to default which i assume makes it look worse (he says fingers crossed ) but there will always be non-performing loans showing i feel and i never expect to get back to 100% at any One time
|
|
liso
Member of DD Central
Posts: 389
Likes: 394
|
Post by liso on Oct 14, 2019 10:56:00 GMT
Unless the information on my account is wrong (which is possible, it's happened before), the statistics quoted by bigfoot12 and the suggestions by treetophugger do not reflect the reality of my account. By 'default' I mean 'in collection', I do not mean late or overterm. If OC are claiming only 1 loan passed into collection in the last year, that is absolutely not what my account shows. I have several loans put into collection in the last year, and still there. I have no capital loss so far, just loss of income.
|
|