Selling Loans - Time frame. Page 1, 1st Post. Updated daily.

I had started the third cycle of selling an ISA, just a few days ago, but then three of the twelve loans went processing, including a bigger one which meant that 25% of the cash would not be sold after 40 days. So I have stopped and started again today 9 May, now that eleven loans are live. But there is going to be a fourth ever-decreasing cycle. You can check out but you can never leave.

Having attempted to put the whole of one of my FC accounts up for sale on 13th April (can't remember how many were unsaleable at the time), it looks like it could take a very large number of selling cycles to be rid of the non-defaulted ones. 26 days later, my loans by status are:

• 322 for sale - 69.0%
• 77 live - 16.5%
• 24 processing - 5.1%
• 17 late - 3.6%
• 17 bad debt - 3.6%
• 10 repaid early - 2.1%

EDIT: I may have suffered exceptionally bad luck due to covering 3 bank holidays in this first selling cycle.

I suspected inflow of fresh ISA money starting April, 6th may have caused a slow-down in selling and lengthening of the queue. However, that does not seem the case. The graph displays Criston's data and shows that the rate of queue growth is the same before and after the end of the tax year. 

At the current rate the queue grows by about half a day per day. So, assuming the trend persists (who knows?) and you sell now, add another 50% 




The loans I put up 11/4 are still not sold. It was 7 (I believe to remember) and it's down to 1 now, which may go into Processing today. 

Thanks, that confirms what I expected, ie that something changed in about January, now revealed as deliberate. There was no obvious reason for the sudden drop in sales rates. Technically this can be see a change in the terms and conditions, of which they didn't tell us.

blender; I changed you from 3/5/19  to 9/5/19.

sherb; Added you in.

FC is cited in that Times article as saying "A new approach attempts to ensure new customers are not matched with an unfair proportion of old loans that customers are seeking to sell"

FC's argument is flawed because one cannot sell loans in distress or defaulted. Those fraction of loans that are still live after some time have actually a higher likelihood of surviving further than fresh ones because (part of) the dodgy ones got sieved out over time. It's an example of survival of the fittest. With an entirely new batch you will also get a fresh batch of losers. So, the seller gives the new buyer an advantage (and keeps sitting on the bad loans). Fair enough if one wants to get out, me thinks.

However, there were some fellows that sold and re-bought a new portfolio every few months before significant defaults set in. That would increase likelihood of future failures for the buyers of those loans. If that behaviour is what FC wanted to address, they could have avoided it in more reasonable ways. Besides, it is still possible, just buy, sell next day and wait for the next repeat.

Another possibility is that FC is aware of the argument above and deliberately wants to lock investors into anything that ever was or gets into the "Processing" state. Anything larger than zero of these loans would then be considered an "unfair proportion". That seems to be quite unfair to the seller as he sells de-risked loans.