james21
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Post by james21 on Mar 21, 2019 8:55:40 GMT
Only one I can recommend is the Assetz; QAA or 90 day as you can withdraw all instantly (or 90 days) and the provision fund covers any defaults, so no losses, though your interest rates will only be between 4 and a bit and 5 and a bit percent
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Post by Ace on Mar 21, 2019 9:03:53 GMT
Hi @dllive , I'm not qualified to give advice, so please don't take this as such. However, I can tell you what I would do in the circumstances you described;
Firstly, if I had too little spare cash to risk losing, I would not use P2P. I would stick to FSCS protected accounts with the best combination of rates at access times to suit.
If I did have sufficient cash to be able to allocate a pot for investment in P2P, that wouldn't ruin my life if I lost it, and I had too little time, or the will, to allocate to doing DD and managing that pot, I would spread it equally between platforms I like that have automatic accounts. For me, this would be LW, GS, UB, CP and AC. Of those, I would drop CP if I was likely to need quick access to my cash. With AC I would choose the 90 day notice account, or one with quicker access if required. Note that none of them have guaranteed quick access in adverse conditions.
Good luck
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r00lish67
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Post by r00lish67 on Mar 21, 2019 9:07:07 GMT
I know nothing about your personal circumstances, but IMV: If you already have strong exposure to equities, then consider P2P for a small part of your portfolio. If not, I (personally) wouldn't. The main reason I say that is that, again IMV, there is an appreciable risk of platform failure of even the 'safest' P2P platform. A case can be made for each and every one as to why they are potentially vulnerable. If you don't have much wealth, that's a big risk to take. If you decide it is suitable, then Ratesetter is at least very well established. Their main known threat at the moment I'd say, is their relatively low PF coverage at the moment. Forum members can refer you for the £100 bonus if you prefer to give the referrer bonus to them (although Monevator does damn good work!). Assetz have a great operation going, but I am a little nervous about their QAA structure (easy-access for long term loans). The introduction of new funding lines and different products (e.g. 90DQAA) should help with this though. Edit: crossed with Ace - re: cash v equities - just to make clear my point, it would be normal to have a portion of your wealth in cash or bonds as well as equities given their volatility. Read monevator if required for more detail. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 21, 2019 9:24:05 GMT
Hi everyone. I lead a very busy life and dont have the luxury of time to spend researching and keeping an eye on investments. In early 2017 I made the worst financial decision of my life and threw a lot of money into Collateral, Lendy, Funding Secure; not appreciating the risks (yes I know: lack of due diligence, research, etc etc...). We all now obviously know what a bad decision this has turned out to be!  So now Im wondering what to do. Is there any P2P platform out there that people can recommend as a fairly safe platform to put money into and have it properly diversified? I was even caught out with AC's so called 'diversification' and found most of my money had been put into a loan that subsequently went into default! I was reading this article yesterday: monevator.com/ratesetter-high-interest-offer/ . It seems too good to be true? So Im wondering - what is the 'safest' P2P platform? Obviously FS and Lendy are completely inept in some very fundamental ways (although I would choose different words to describe them but probably - legally - it would be prudent not to!). Despite the diversification issue, AC are very good at chasing down defaults and keeping lenders updated. What about Funding Circle? Ratesetter? Wellendus? Any others that are considered fairly 'safe' and suitable for people with a little money but limited time to do due diligence? ... or maybe P2P is not suitable for me and I should keep the money in a bank. I must say - the FCA have acted woefully poorly in the whole 'P2P situation' (as far as I can see). I hold them partly responsible. Thanks WWWWOOOWWW
Let me read your note back to you.
I invested without due diligence and lost money.
I'm now going to ask a bunch of strangers to suggest some alternatives which may mean I will not do any due diligence.
Really?
Do you think it is appropriate to add to your lack of due diligence further?
I'd have a serious review of all my risk/reward positions and make sure this P2P money is what you want to place on the table.
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iren
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Post by iren on Mar 21, 2019 10:22:34 GMT
If you don’t have the time for ongoing high levels of due diligence, I would suggest staying out of the P2P space completely.
Have a look at market tradeable investment trusts that operate in similar space to pay out dividends derived from loan income and similar assets e.g. Henderson Diversified Income Trust plc, Twenty Four Income Ltd. This avoids the liquidity risk and platform failure risk associated with P2P, and the fund managers commonly have better track records than P2P. The most reliable broker in my experience is AJ Bell.
Personally, I’ve reduced my P2P allocation by around 50% in recent months, as it’s often no longer clear that the rewards merit the risk and there are better opportunities available in other asset classes.
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Post by df on Mar 21, 2019 11:26:54 GMT
Hi everyone. I lead a very busy life and dont have the luxury of time to spend researching and keeping an eye on investments. In early 2017 I made the worst financial decision of my life and threw a lot of money into Collateral, Lendy, Funding Secure; not appreciating the risks (yes I know: lack of due diligence, research, etc etc...). We all now obviously know what a bad decision this has turned out to be! So now Im wondering what to do. Is there any P2P platform out there that people can recommend as a fairly safe platform to put money into and have it properly diversified? I was even caught out with AC's so called 'diversification' and found most of my money had been put into a loan that subsequently went into default! I was reading this article yesterday: monevator.com/ratesetter-high-interest-offer/ . It seems too good to be true? So Im wondering - what is the 'safest' P2P platform? Obviously FS and Lendy are completely inept in some very fundamental ways (although I would choose different words to describe them but probably - legally - it would be prudent not to!). Despite the diversification issue, AC are very good at chasing down defaults and keeping lenders updated. What about Funding Circle? Ratesetter? Wellendus? Any others that are considered fairly 'safe' and suitable for people with a little money but limited time to do due diligence? ... or maybe P2P is not suitable for me and I should keep the money in a bank. I must say - the FCA have acted woefully poorly in the whole 'P2P situation' (as far as I can see). I hold them partly responsible. Thanks Out of the lot I use I consider AC (QAA, 30-day and 90-day only), GS, RS, UB, Welendus and LW safer platforms/accounts.
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arby
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Post by arby on Mar 21, 2019 11:44:28 GMT
Is the hope of earning an extra few % over the risk free rate sufficiently appealing that you are willing to risk a large part of the capital to gain it?
If so, continue with your research, if not, then please just run away and stick your money somewhere safe.
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corto
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one-syllabistic
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Post by corto on Mar 21, 2019 11:57:54 GMT
I'd call the Ratesetter offer cited above as safe as Ratesetter. Unlikely they go bust over the course of the next year, but possible.
In any case, the offer is a 100£ bonus for 1000£ minimum investment for 1 year. Afterwards it's the usual Ratesetter offer.
As suggested earlier some investment trusts are safer and pay similar dividends; certainly better rates than the rolling market
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picnicman
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Post by picnicman on Mar 21, 2019 12:30:53 GMT
Hi everyone. I lead a very busy life and dont have the luxury of time to spend researching and keeping an eye on investments. In early 2017 I made the worst financial decision of my life and threw a lot of money into Collateral, Lendy, Funding Secure; not appreciating the risks (yes I know: lack of due diligence, research, etc etc...). We all now obviously know what a bad decision this has turned out to be! So now Im wondering what to do. Is there any P2P platform out there that people can recommend as a fairly safe platform to put money into and have it properly diversified? I was even caught out with AC's so called 'diversification' and found most of my money had been put into a loan that subsequently went into default! I was reading this article yesterday: monevator.com/ratesetter-high-interest-offer/ . It seems too good to be true? So Im wondering - what is the 'safest' P2P platform? Obviously FS and Lendy are completely inept in some very fundamental ways (although I would choose different words to describe them but probably - legally - it would be prudent not to!). Despite the diversification issue, AC are very good at chasing down defaults and keeping lenders updated. What about Funding Circle? Ratesetter? Wellendus? Any others that are considered fairly 'safe' and suitable for people with a little money but limited time to do due diligence? ... or maybe P2P is not suitable for me and I should keep the money in a bank. I must say - the FCA have acted woefully poorly in the whole 'P2P situation' (as far as I can see). I hold them partly responsible. Thanks WWWWOOOWWW
Let me read your note back to you.
I invested without due diligence and lost money.
I'm now going to ask a bunch of strangers to suggest some alternatives which may mean I will not do any due diligence.
Really?
Do you think it is appropriate to add to your lack of due diligence further?
I'd have a serious review of all my risk/reward positions and make sure this P2P money is what you want to place on the table.
@bobo - useful to get others views as part of your own DD, but other than that you are exactly right (even though you are a stranger to me  ) Cheers P
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pom
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Post by pom on Mar 21, 2019 14:37:45 GMT
... or maybe P2P is not suitable for me and I should keep the money in a bank. If you're even thinking that then you probably already have your answer. Especially if you don't have any other investments and don't have so much cash that finding enough good FSCS protected accounts could be a challenge. If you are still tempted but don't want to have to spend loads of time worrying about your investments then the only way to do that is make sure you don't need to. Decide on a sensible pot size - only invest money that you don't need access to in the short term (or preferably never) or if you are likely to need in the longer term are likely to be able to replace. Perhaps for the purposes of this you should take a very pessimistic view as to how much you'll get back from LY, FS & COL. Assuming this is still non-zero then decide on a platform maximum - there's lots of theories out there as to how many is the ideal, but it also depends on your pot size. So assume a platform collapses, how much could you be comfortable explaining away if someone asks "You lost HOW much?!?!" (Find something that you can easily relate to and be comfortable with, cost of something you might need to do without, small percentage of overall wealth that would soon be replaced, etc). If that number is still non-zero and big enough to be worth the faff, then and only then perhaps consider black box accounts that either do lots of diversification for you, have provision funds or both and then hopefully the only things that can really hurt you will be so catastrophic that it'll be the least of your worries
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iRobot
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Post by iRobot on Mar 21, 2019 18:20:35 GMT
Not so much a luxury as a necessity, IMO, and on that basis I feel you've answered your own question:
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Post by mrclondon on Mar 21, 2019 19:31:50 GMT
@dllive - there is some wise advice here, even though it will probably make uncomfortable reading for you.
I commented in reply to a post earlier today (on the DD Central thread for Lendy's DFL006 loan) "Put simply we gambled that the student dev would be built by the borrower, partly lulled by the apparent progress in Huddersfield and the completed (pre-p2p) dev in Bradford. But the spin of the roulette wheel has not favoured us."
If you buy shares on the AIM market for example, there is a very lengthy document that details the disclosure requirements that companies listed on AIM must comply with. There simply is no equivalent disclosure requirements for borrowers seeking p2p loans. Whilst some of us do have the time and inclination to carry out loan due dilligence, spotting serious issues in time to exit the loan or avoid it in the first place is not easy given the lack of disclosure, and the generally inadequate ongoing loan monitoring by the platform.
My quote from earlier mentioned the roulette wheel, however, the better analogy is horse racing .... you can study the form of the horses and the weather etc all you like, but you really won't have a true picture of each horse's potential.
The crux of your question was to seek recommendations for black-box style accounts. A perfectly reasonable request but possibly a mis-guided one given your first hand experience of the p2p risks (via COL/L/FS). Lets take an extreme example ... Lendy now do a black box account, would you feel comfortable investing in it knowing the risks of their self-select loans ? No, of course you wouldn't. Now lets assume Joe Bloggs Loans Ltd became an appointed representative of a company with FCA p2p approvals, and started offering black-box loans offering lets say 8% pa but provided zero info on where the loans were sourced from, but there were a few random posts on the forum suggesting this really was the p2p solution we've all been waiting for ? Would you invest ? ... remembering you don't have the time to do your own research. How would you know the loans contained therein were not similiar to those at COL/L/FS ?
Even if you did settle on what seemed to be a black-box account that fit your risk profile perfectly today, are you going to devote time to ensuring the nature of the loans the black box account is investing in are not becoming riskier as the months pass by ?
You had the courage to admit you ploughed into COL/L/FS without understanding the risks. You won't be the only one by a long way, and there will be many more (myself included) that evaluated the risks but initially underestimated them. The concern is that many people (myself included) may still be underestimating the risks ... don't fall into the trap of convincing yourself there is such a thing as "safe(r) p2p". There isn't.
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Post by fatbritabroad on Mar 22, 2019 5:50:29 GMT
Wise advice here I think. I'm not saying I've got it right or wrong but I researched p2p on both here and 4th way financial thing etc.
Chose the platforms that looked the safest with easy auto diversification (that seemed to be actual diversification) or manual where the returns seemed worth the risks, and mostly with a track record and an isa so at least regulated whatever that means,. I started with ablrate but very very small (1000 and split across almost all the loans). I freely admit to not being able to evaluate the loans so only keep a few thousand on this platform and my interest outweighs what I've got in each borrower
I now use ratesetter assetz lending works Kufflink (mostly for the sign up bonuses) but have a total of about 22k spread across 5 platforms. Biggest exposure is probably about 6k. When a platforms hits 10k I'll move out and place it on another. Potentially the property crowd sourcing sites next or maybe growth street. The key for me is diversifying across platforms and keeping it simple and easy to manage. Not always easy to do both!
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walktall7
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Post by walktall7 on Mar 22, 2019 6:55:28 GMT
I am a buy to let investor and my brief look at property crowd type investments is that an investment there relies totally on valuation of the property in three years time or when you want to sell it. Also it relies to on finding a tenant who pays rent and leaves the property in a good state not needing much maintenance before selling the property or finding another tenant.
So you have to trust that the property crowd site gets all these things right for you to get your capital back. It would be very easy to get your fingers burnt investing in these sites as the sites main aim is possibly just to keep getting the maintenance fees.
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Post by lotus_eater on Mar 28, 2019 10:05:13 GMT
As others have said, P2P is risky at best, even when you know what you're doing. To be 100% sure keep your capital in a government insured bank account (ok, maybe 90% safe based on financial management of governments around the world currently)  If you are willing to risk the capital for better returns, maybe try some of the bigger P2P boys with secured loans, provision funds etc. Returns won't be stellar but should beat any bank account, although again you could lose it all. I track a few of the bigger boys and publish returns each month to give you an idea here obviousinvestor.com/my-investments/peer-to-peer-investments/If you don't have time for due diligence, perhaps go with some of the auto-invest accounts? Most of my P2P investments are this way. |
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) Cheers P
