Ratesetter weekly lending drifting downwards

Just because I'm paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get me....

For those who don't have access to the figures, the weekly lending figures for the past 15 weeks are (in millions):
4 weeks to 02/08/14 - £23.42
4 weeks to 30/08/14 - £24.61
w/e 06/09/14 - £7.87
w/e 13/09/14 - £7.53
w/e 20/09/14 - £6.98
w/e 27/09/14 - £6.90  (4 week total £29.28)
w/e 04/10/14 - £9.42
w/e 11/10/14 - £6.35
w/e 18/10/14 - £6.04

Let's see what the next 5-9 weeks bring.

RS did 2 things at once, introduce the new website and run a large advertising campaign. This is never a good idea because you do not know what effect each change had. Although it could be a good idea from the perspective of the website designers because just in case their new brand image/website is flawed they can hide behind the increased business coming from the advertising campaign and pretend that it is a result of their efforts.

Personally I would think that the advertising campaign has had a positive impact, possibly large, while the

                                                                      purple                                                                    horror                            

has had a negative impact, possible large. The former will tend be transitory, while the latter will be permanent until they change the damn thing. So if the trend does continue then I think we will all know where the problem is.

hmmm .... Purple Pox .....  I like it. There must be a few more apt alliterations ...

 - Puzzling Purple Preference
 - Putrid Purple Pestulance

actually it is not so much the colour that I object to as the graphics and excess of white space formatting and mix of font size from too big to too small, so harder to see what you want to see,
and more effort required to use the site, so  .....

- Piss Poor Pale Purple Placements

Three weeks on and the jury is still out.  The attached file gives the raw data which people can play with if they wish.  My gut feel is that RS had a spectacular Q3 this year, but that rapid increase in sales has now run out of steam and we're returning to an historic, slower rate of growth.  Last week's sales were very low by 2014 RS standards at under £6 million.

None of this means that RS is in trouble: just not growing as quickly as it has been.  Combine that with some big recent inflows of funds and you have a recipe for lower returns for investors.  Damn!

RS rolling 4 weekly lending.xls (23 KB)

We've still got £1.8 million approved demand for the 4/5 year markets, and a further £1.5 million pending, yet with only £1.8 million total funds on offer from lenders. There is seemingly slow uptake by borrowers of lender offers, certainly over the past week. But if the borrowers want the money, they can only delay for so long. The website hasn't changed so drastically under the hood -- a bit more purple and a bit more whitespace, but otherwise it's the same functionality, so I can't believe it's put off too many people unless there are large numbers stuck with very old browsers.

As a lender I don't think there is that much reduced functionality either, but I don't know whether there might have been some for borrowers. I would guess that on average borrower's are young(er), and lenders  older(er), so old browsers are more likely to be an issue for lenders (witness comments here), and if the site has been optimised for tablets and smartphones, borrower's will be well happy. Purple, now that's another matter.........