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Post by chris on Oct 8, 2014 12:12:26 GMT
chrisI bought a loan unit for £44.59 on 3/10 and it's now displayed with a value of £44.58 (presumably after being rounded down from the system value of 44.5899999...). If I put the unit on the AM will it display as £44.58 or £44.59 and will the purchaser get billed £44.58 or £44.59? On the new system if I want to sell a loan with principal £553.5555... will I receive £553.55 or £553.56 for the sale? Thanks Jack As per the private messages I'm looking into the difference between the principal on the first instance. I suspect the reason is related to the answer to your question. In answer to your question if you want to sell a loan with principal £553.55555 you will receive £553.55 for the sale. This is the only place the principal remaining on a per loan unit basis is actually important which is why I've been somewhat torn by the change in calculation. I can round to nearest penny, I can round up, I can round down. I chose the most accurate in terms of reflecting your position in rounding down, but perhaps reverting to round to nearest is better as it should average out over enough transactions on the aftermarket. The old system was rounding down but calculated on a per loan unit basis for the total principal remaining, whereas the new system calculates the total principal remaining on a per loan basis but then rounds on a per loan part basis. I can see mathematically why that could be out by 1p between the two calculations even though it's a subtle change. Without having had the chance to look at your specific example, I suspect that what's happened is that you've bought using the old calculation and now the value has shifted by 1p with the switch to the new calculation. As mentioned by private message if you send me a couple of specifics I can look into it and check definitively.
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Post by yorkshireman on Oct 8, 2014 12:19:23 GMT
Looking at the total reported principal remaining at the loan level it's currently £130,601.94 and adding up all the individual loan units it's £130,589.47 - well within the expected difference (£12.47 difference vs a theoretical maximum of £16.91 which is 1p per loan unit). Please tell me I’m wrong and that I misunderstand the above statement Chris, a discrepancy of between £12.47 and £16.91 is acceptable? In a previous role I was responsible for a multi million pound value raw material stock which always balanced to the exact pound sterling and kilogram at each month end.
If I bought something in Sainsburys and said that I’m paying between £12.47 and £16.91 less than the true value, I’d be called a criminal.
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Post by Jack Barlow on Oct 8, 2014 12:20:38 GMT
chris, I've sent the requested info via PM; we can continue our discussion there now that the earlier gremlins in the PM service seem to have been resolved.
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ilmoro
Member of DD Central
'Wondering which of the bu***rs to blame, and watching for pigs on the wing.' - Pink Floyd
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Post by ilmoro on Oct 8, 2014 12:26:49 GMT
So FF is supposed to have reverted temporarily to its original balance pre recovery except mine seems to have lost 1p which makes no sense as the original recovery payment was rounded down by nearly a penny. Also my available to invest figure is £99 at the top but my mini statement available to invest is £100. Assuming one is rounded done & the other up then this would suggest I dont have £100. Or do I? No idea anymore! AI seems to be slow in picking up units. chris can we make sure the new site displays everything to at least 2dp for clarity and it would also be helpful if the statement included a running balance column? AC very frustrating at moment which hopefully new site will fix [insert suitable breath holding reference here] I've asked for everything to be displayed to 2 decimal places and rounded down. This will certainly be on the new site but hopefully on the old site as well. There is a slight complication in that if the principal remaining is calculated as £99.99999999999999999999 then it would then be reported as £99.99 instead of £100. Because sometimes fractions work out that way, whilst it isn't significant to a repayment being reprocessed it could be confusing in the case of a repayment. I may switch to rounding up if it's 0.9p but down if less than that. Anyone have any thoughts on that, as to which they'd prefer? Is there no convention or regulatory guidance in the finance industry on rounding? I always thought x>=5 round up otherwise down. Personally I feel it should be in favour of customer but I admit to bias! I want to know that if my balance says £x, then I have at least £x therefore rounding down would seem to make more sense here at least.
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shimself
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Post by shimself on Oct 8, 2014 12:29:36 GMT
Looking at the total reported principal remaining at the loan level it's currently £130,601.94 and adding up all the individual loan units it's £130,589.47 - well within the expected difference (£12.47 difference vs a theoretical maximum of £16.91 which is 1p per loan unit). Please tell me I’m wrong and that I misunderstand the above statement Chris, a discrepancy of between £12.47 and £16.91 is acceptable? In a previous role I was responsible for a multi million pound value raw material stock which always balanced to the exact pound sterling and kilogram at each month end.
If I bought something in Sainsburys and said that I’m paying between £12.47 and £16.91 less than the true value, I’d be called a criminal.
Well if I had a house on sale for £130601.94 and you paid me £130589.47 I really wouldn't mind. And personally I think if the stock was always that accurate then I'd think that somebody was reporting the theoretical figure to me rather than the actual.
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Post by chris on Oct 8, 2014 12:30:40 GMT
Looking at the total reported principal remaining at the loan level it's currently £130,601.94 and adding up all the individual loan units it's £130,589.47 - well within the expected difference (£12.47 difference vs a theoretical maximum of £16.91 which is 1p per loan unit). Please tell me I’m wrong and that I misunderstand the above statement Chris, a discrepancy of between £12.47 and £16.91 is acceptable? In a previous role I was responsible for a multi million pound value raw material stock which always balanced to the exact pound sterling and kilogram at each month end.
If I bought something in Sainsburys and said that I’m paying between £12.47 and £16.91 less than the true value, I’d be called a criminal.
You misunderstand and all sites will have to address this in a similar way. On a per loan unit basis I can only report to the nearest penny, to show 20 or 40 decimal places to lenders would be impractical and would cause complaints. Behind the scenes the accurate figure is used but a rounded figures is displayed to the lenders. In general all the sums the lenders post on this forum use that rounded figure which can be up to 1p different to the actual figure on a per loan unit basis. If you have 1,691 loan units in a loan then 1p times that gives the sum of £16.91 difference. No money is lost, missing, or underpaid when it comes to actual sums moved from borrower to lenders. This is a simple display issue borne of the practical realities of presenting information to lenders on a per loan unit basis.
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Post by chris on Oct 8, 2014 12:34:00 GMT
I've asked for everything to be displayed to 2 decimal places and rounded down. This will certainly be on the new site but hopefully on the old site as well. There is a slight complication in that if the principal remaining is calculated as £99.99999999999999999999 then it would then be reported as £99.99 instead of £100. Because sometimes fractions work out that way, whilst it isn't significant to a repayment being reprocessed it could be confusing in the case of a repayment. I may switch to rounding up if it's 0.9p but down if less than that. Anyone have any thoughts on that, as to which they'd prefer? Is there no convention or regulatory guidance in the finance industry on rounding? I always thought x>=5 round up otherwise down. Personally I feel it should be in favour of customer but I admit to bias! I want to know that if my balance says £x, then I have at least £x therefore rounding down would seem to make more sense here at least. None that I'm aware of. This rounding doesn't affect amounts paid to lenders, under the old model it did but not the new, it will only affect the aftermarket sale price which is between two lenders. Rounding down / up / to nearest will shift things between buyer and seller, perhaps rounding to nearest is the fairest way as sometimes you'll win sometimes you'll lose. But you could be receiving interest and principal repayments lower than you're expecting in that case which is why I chose rounding down as you'll usually get a little bit more than expected instead of sometimes getting less.
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Post by yorkshireman on Oct 8, 2014 12:53:03 GMT
Please tell me I’m wrong and that I misunderstand the above statement Chris, a discrepancy of between £12.47 and £16.91 is acceptable? In a previous role I was responsible for a multi million pound value raw material stock which always balanced to the exact pound sterling and kilogram at each month end.
If I bought something in Sainsburys and said that I’m paying between £12.47 and £16.91 less than the true value, I’d be called a criminal.
You misunderstand and all sites will have to address this in a similar way. On a per loan unit basis I can only report to the nearest penny, to show 20 or 40 decimal places to lenders would be impractical and would cause complaints. Behind the scenes the accurate figure is used but a rounded figures is displayed to the lenders. In general all the sums the lenders post on this forum use that rounded figure which can be up to 1p different to the actual figure on a per loan unit basis. If you have 1,691 loan units in a loan then 1p times that gives the sum of £16.91 difference. No money is lost, missing, or underpaid when it comes to actual sums moved from borrower to lenders. This is a simple display issue borne of the practical realities of presenting information to lenders on a per loan unit basis. Ah! The mysteries of IT! However, I’ll accept your word that in the real world, no money is lost, missing or underpaid. Thanks for the clarification.
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Post by yorkshireman on Oct 8, 2014 13:00:08 GMT
And personally I think if the stock was always that accurate then I'd think that somebody was reporting the theoretical figure to me rather than the actual. I’m better than most at my job because I’m hands on and pay attention to detail, that’s also how I knew there was a problem with the furniture retailer repayment. 
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Post by chris on Oct 8, 2014 13:04:59 GMT
Ah! The mysteries of IT! However, I’ll accept your word that in the real world, no money is lost, missing or underpaid. Thanks for the clarification. Tell me about it. It's more a mathematical conundrum than IT though. Interest and principal repayments very rarely line up nicely to whole penny amounts but those are the units that lenders work in. So there's always an element of rounding in what is displayed, which when aggregated ends up giving you the discrepancies I've mentioned. The fun and games happens when you realise that floating point arithmetic as usually used by computers isn't accurate. For example if you ask a computer if 0.1 is smaller than 0.3 - 0.2 then it will say that it is. This is because 0.1 can't be accurately reflected in binary. We've spent a lot of time and effort coding around this to make sure that the maths is accurate as it can be, using fixed precision arithmetic rather than floating point. This means there's a known inaccuracy, in our case either 20 decimal places or 40 decimal places depending on the significance of that particular figure, but it's controlled to make sure that it's always statistically insignificant. With floating point binary, which most developers would default to using as it's the built in standard method available in all modern languages, there are some known issues that could end up being statistically significant.
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Post by Ton ⓉⓞⓃ on Oct 8, 2014 13:33:29 GMT
Is there no convention or regulatory guidance in the finance industry on rounding? I always thought x>=5 round up otherwise down. Personally I feel it should be in favour of customer but I admit to bias! I want to know that if my balance says £x, then I have at least £x therefore rounding down would seem to make more sense here at least. None that I'm aware of. This rounding doesn't affect amounts paid to lenders, under the old model it did but not the new, it will only affect the aftermarket sale price which is between two lenders. Rounding down / up / to nearest will shift things between buyer and seller, perhaps rounding to nearest is the fairest way as sometimes you'll win sometimes you'll lose. But you could be receiving interest and principal repayments lower than you're expecting in that case which is why I chose rounding down as you'll usually get a little bit more than expected instead of sometimes getting less. This should be the first topic in an FAQ, when you get back from holiday...
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mikeb
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Post by mikeb on Oct 8, 2014 14:09:43 GMT
With the K*** group, as explained the system was previously over reporting your capital in that loan - a combination of a display issue after the repayment on the 2nd, and a change in the rounding per loan unit to always round down instead of round to nearest penny. Those two will account for any changes. As far as I'm aware all loans are correct and all lender totals are correct with two maybe three exceptions. These are FF which needs it's loan model updating to reflect the correct state of the loan and the recovery made so far, the historic issue with some deferred interest being misallocated at the start of the this year which I have promised to investigate after the new site is live, and possibly one or two of the bridging loans if the admin team have yet to apply the default interest (although I thought all of those were done). The general rule is that if the loan repayments page is correct for a given loan then the repayments you will receive will be correct, if there are any discrepancies they will be a display issue that will be quick and easy to resolve. All loan repayments are double checked as they are received from the borrower and posted through the system so if there are any issues with the repayments page then it will always be picked up and corrected then. All payments made to lenders are now carried out at the loan level rather than loan part level so it is these high level figures which are important in distributing cash. If you are aware of any others please can you give me some specifics to work with so that I can investigate your issue either via a public post mentioning me by name, via a private message, or via our customer care team. K*** group: All I know is that every month until now, I have had an entry on my statement saying "£x.xx principle paid" and at the same time, the outstanding capital has come down be the exact same amount, and my account total has gone UP by that amount. As of today, that is no longer the case. You paid me £x.xx and (a day later) reduced my outstanding capital by more than that. It's more than a rounding error, so I feel my pocket has been picked, or there's a bug  F****t F*****re: Don't get me started. That HAD been fixed and is now broken again. I've been trying to work out where £84.random of cash has come from. It turns out it's that been reset to full capital (?) removing the recovery, and then a whole slew of loans having their outstanding capital reduced by a few pence here and there. Pocket picked or rounding error? I'm not sure any more. Your "it's just a display issue" seems to have been copied from Funding Circle. I'm trying to treat the transactions and totals you show me as more than random numbers and approximations. Maybe I'm being too demanding in expecting my account to balance and look sane from hour to hour. I don't know. The trouble seems to be that problems are being reported, people in places of authority "believe them to have been sorted", yet they haven't been. As a general request: How about a proper full statement, to all lenders, not just those on this forum, as to what is going on and when things can be expected to be accurate and trustworthy? There must be people looking at their accounts and wondering what is happening. Specifics? F****t F******re: Capital outstanding jumped back to full amount during today, ignoring the recovery. Ipswich: Accrued interest doubled for no reason, reported on Q&A not A'd K*** Group: As above Just about everything that is repaying capital has gone a bit backwards (1p per loan part), but that's, I believe, because of your rounding changes. Defaults on Liverpool Bridging, F****t Fu****re, and CC Lei***e -- don't think these are being accrued at the right rate -- still using the old agreed rate, default interest to be applied as some kind of manual intervention later?
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ilmoro
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'Wondering which of the bu***rs to blame, and watching for pigs on the wing.' - Pink Floyd
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Post by ilmoro on Oct 8, 2014 17:02:34 GMT
To avoid continued confusion I've made that change to the rounding on FF. Unless there's any objections this change will roll out to other loans at around 4pm. FF has gone back to the right original amount but Ive now gained 1p on 8 loans & 2p on another, none of these have had capital repayments made. Cant see any reason why any rounding would need to be applied to these! Edit: All correct now following recent tinkering. Thanks
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mikes1531
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Post by mikes1531 on Oct 8, 2014 20:32:48 GMT
Ka** group: All I know is that every month until now, I have had an entry on my statement saying "£x.xx principle paid" and at the same time, the outstanding capital has come down be the exact same amount, and my account total has gone UP by that amount. : What exactly do you mean by "my account total"? If I receive a principal repayment, I expect my account cash balance ("Available To Invest") to increase by that amount, my principal/capital outstanding ("Loan Units") to go down by that amount, and my total account value ("Total Investment") to remain unchanged -- because all that's happened is that some of my loan units have been turned into cash. For my total account value ("Total Investment") to increase, I'd need to have received some income/interest. If I receive an interest payment, I expect my account cash balance ("Available To Invest") to increase by that amount, my principal/capital outstanding ("Loan Units") to remain unchanged, and my total account value ("Total Investment") to go up by that amount -- because I'm better off for having received some income. Am I doing something wrong?
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mikeb
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Post by mikeb on Oct 9, 2014 8:35:57 GMT
Ka** group: All I know is that every month until now, I have had an entry on my statement saying "£x.xx principle paid" and at the same time, the outstanding capital has come down be the exact same amount, and my account total has gone UP by that amount.Am I doing something wrong? (Confusion Error: I didn't mean my account total went up! What was I thinking?) See your Assetz summary page? The line "Total Investment" (that's 'my account total') goes up by the amount of interest paid. The line in "Loan Units" outstanding capital goes down by the principal recovered, and accrued interest should drop by the amount of interest paid. The line "Available to invest" goes up by principal recovered AND interest paid, subject to AI kicking in and swiping something. You're not doing anything wrong. It's the AC accounting system. Over the last few days, some beads have fallen off the abacus. The amount of kapital I have oustanding with Ka** group has changed, from being "displayed wrong, too high" (which I accept having worked through the figures of all transactions) to now being too low, to having changed due to rounding, still low. It's dead simple to me :- I bought loan units at a total of £X and have received capital back of £Y -- my outstanding capital should be £X-£Y, and it's not. It's gone from being shown too high (display error), to too low, to nearly-right-but-not-rounding-errors. chris has the details ... it can't be just my account, I'm sure everyone with Ka** group units will be affected, but whether they were keeping close enough records to notice is another matter  It probably doesn't help this is one of those reverse-auction special cases. The other errors seem to have now been corrected (rounding changes), but Finest Unmentionable Ltd (capital), Ipswich (accrued interest) are still wrong. I'm working round those until someone corrects something.
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