FC Secret Account Value Adjustments

I was opne of those whose account didn't balance - after the adjustments (or reconciliations, or whatever FC call it) it still doesn't balance, but is now off in the other direction. I am still waiting for FC to 'show their working', since the think it was balanced OK on 1/Oct (presumably when they made these manual changes). Quote:

"Thank you for your email. I can confirm that as of 00:00 on 02/10/2014 your Funding Circle account was fully reconciled."

but it wasn't and still isn't.

I just ran a transaction analysis (I've been putting it off in the hope that the download loan book might get its financial data back - fat chance). There are all sorts of minor glaring errors .. loan part sales which lack an entry for sold interest/markup (the other two entries are there), and today one loan part shown as sold twice - once without the markup entry and once with. Why FC require 3 lines of transaction report to show one sale (or two for a purchase) mystifies me anyway. The accounting system is clearly not something you'd want to wave at the FCA as a shining example of advanced math.

I agree that lender statements of account are inadequate and manual intervention to make secret adjustments is unacceptable. Transparent and accountable? Not in this area. Total reconciliation? Is it possible and would you have FC do it?
However, some may be comforted to hear that after two years plus my account reconciles to the penny, and it is usually +or- 1p max.
A tip (not advice, oh no no no) is to know your capital stake and use it to reconcile easily. For example I only ever deposit or withdraw £1000 or a multiple of that. When I check that my account reconciles to my stake, I simply calculate Funding Circle Total minus Accrued Interest minus Net Earnings and that should equal my stake as an exact multiple of £1000. I then know that nothing is missing or (less likely) added.

If your stake is not such a multiple, it is always possible to make it so with a withdrawal or deposit and then to stick to the practice of multiples of £1000.
This can be done with £100 rather than £1000 - but with less security if for example you make £100 bids and think FC might lose one. I have had money disappear for a while but it always comes back - so far.


Edit: of course the funding circle total has also to be the sum of its parts - but if not that is a clear FC internal problem.

whatever the errors may be on individual accounts the unacceptable part of this is that FC make "adjustments" to client's accounts without leaving any record of doing so. No financial institution be it a bank, insurance company or investment company would be allowed to do so. Surely the FCA must look at this sort of thing.....or perhaps their DD is the same as FCs .

I'd be astonished if there were no record of these... it doesn't necessarily imply that YOU can see the record, but I'm sure the auditors will be quite interested in following through at least a sample of them.

Presumably there's no record in the user-visible "statement" of the original error leading to the incorrect balance either?

Perhaps the main issue here is that FC don't provide an equivalent of a bank statement (showing only reconciled transactions with a running total), but that it's easy for users to incorrectly assuming that adding a running total to the transaction statement will create one.

I'd tend to think that the only "real statement" FC provide is the annual summary - most other stuff (for example bids which can magically disappear, and other stuff subject to corrections) would be more equivalent to the "pending transactions" list shown on a bank's online statement.

sorry the last line of the above post is mine. I think I used the quote thing incorrectly

The record IS there in the transaction statement, if you can be bothered to grind through it, although all it says is (quoting mine):
01/10/2014 Reconciliation credit -- Credit: Loan account, Debit: Cash account 4

which is not totally enlightening. Not obvious where that would fit with the FC summary page. As someone mentioned though, transaction reports have always been subject to electronic Snopaque, since money is reserved whenever you bid, and the entry wiped away when the bid drops out. Sorting out which reservations turned into which loan parts is just not possible in any sensible time frame, because you can't easily map from loan numbers to loan part numbers and vv.