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Post by batchoy on Dec 9, 2014 18:37:01 GMT
The same thing has just happened to me, and I wondered what was going on. If you are going to change the function shouldn't you simultaneously amend the options and wording/ text on the "Manual Loan Investments Account/Adjust Repayment Action" tab? Luckily MLIA didn't purchase anything before I noticed the posts on this thread and manually forced the funds into my Cash Account whilst I decide on re-investments. Surely the text already matches the corrected functionality. The option itself is called "On repayment", two of the three options directly mention "repayments", and the text above the selection says "When repayments occur". As pointed out by other lenders on here a loan sale is not a repayment and shouldn't have been treated as such. If you want to withdraw all funds that are freed up on your account then you need to set a withdraw target. If you don't want MLIA to invest in loans then you'll need to either disable it for those loans or set your target to be the level of investment you actually want. Which raises the question how do you maintain a sum of money in the MLIA to purchase a piece of a loan when it comes available, but at the same time have the income from the sale of another loan withdrawn when the loan is sold. Up until this recent change in functionality this was possible, it now appears to be impossible. Also can anyone remember if the setting a withdrawal target in excess of funds awaiting investment still attempts to sell loans in the MLIA or has this been fixed.
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Post by chris on Dec 9, 2014 19:14:26 GMT
Surely the text already matches the corrected functionality. The option itself is called "On repayment", two of the three options directly mention "repayments", and the text above the selection says "When repayments occur". As pointed out by other lenders on here a loan sale is not a repayment and shouldn't have been treated as such. If you want to withdraw all funds that are freed up on your account then you need to set a withdraw target. If you don't want MLIA to invest in loans then you'll need to either disable it for those loans or set your target to be the level of investment you actually want. Which raises the question how do you maintain a sum of money in the MLIA to purchase a piece of a loan when it comes available, but at the same time have the income from the sale of another loan withdrawn when the loan is sold. Up until this recent change in functionality this was possible, it now appears to be impossible. Also can anyone remember if the setting a withdrawal target in excess of funds awaiting investment still attempts to sell loans in the MLIA or has this been fixed. If you can't make the investment there and then to hit your target in that loan then the cash is going to sit there. You'd have to log in to do anything with funds in your cash account, so logging in to move those funds from your MLIA to your cash account isn't too much of a burden. If you've set your targets to be the holdings you want, rather than assume investments won't be made due to lack of funds, then it should still all behave how you want. I can't cater to every edge case scenario without making the system complex, something we're trying to avoid whilst providing the functionality all investors need.
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Post by chris on Dec 9, 2014 20:52:12 GMT
If you are reviewing the target system I have a suggestion for automating it. At present I'm in the habit of buying up what's currently available to get invested and earning then spend quite a bit of time selling some of it off in bits and pieces, trying to keep a modest balance on hand of between £30 and £200, so that I can buy some of my preferred loans if/when they happen to come up for sale. This is quite time-consuming, so I suggest an auto-bidding system to make it more efficient: Proposed Auto-Bidding System Aim: We want a system that quickly invests our money into acceptable loans to start earning interest as soon as possible. Then we want to diversify our holdings to reduce the impact of a possible default, and we want to fine tune our portfolio by switching our holdings so that we are holding more of the loans we prefer. How it would work: 1. Lenders set a target for each loan they want to buy. This is the amount they would ideally like to hold. (I imagine most lenders have done this part already.) 2. An “Investment Limit” is set for each loan. The system may buy up to this Investment Limit in order to get fully invested and earning interest as soon as possible. The Investment Limit could be set for all of a lender’s loans for ease, for example as 1.5, 2 or 3 times the target, or as a percentage of the lender’s total investment e.g. 5 or 10%. Perhaps individual loan Investment Levels could be amended manually if desired, but this is not essential. 3. The lender turns on the Auto-Bidding System (and can suspend it as desired). 4. The system tries to buy up to the target amounts for each loan available at the time, buying higher ranked loans first (i.e. those with a higher target set), and then if there are idle funds left over, it will invest up to the Investment Limit so that the maximum amount of funds are earning interest. 5. The system then tries to tune your loan portfolio by automatically buying higher ranked loan parts when they become available, if there is cash available in the MLIA or there is demand for a lower ranking loan to sell. A further refinement might be for the system to retain a ready cash reserve to snap up sought after loans, in case they become available just when no-one wants to by our lower ranked loans. These in-demand loans generally sell in small amounts (since they are shared out between a largish pool of buyers), so a modest ready cash reserve of £50 to £200 would probably suffice to be able to purchase most of the desired loan parts. The lender could specify the desire to keep a cash reserve, e.g. £100, available for loan X or above in their list of ranked loans. The system would then try to sell off loans less desirable loans that had been purchased up to the Investment Limit (in order to get invested and earning quickly) until they were down to their target, to free up cash for the ready cash reserve. Additional rules might be added later to take advantage of any discounts on offer. For example: buy loans x and above up to the Investment Limit where a discount of y% is on offer. Multiple rules could be allowed. The basic mechanism is not too complicated: The system tries to buy what you want, but to avoid having a lot of money lying around not earning interest it will buy up a bit more of what is on offer, and then it will try to swap this later on to tune your portfolio to exactly match your ideal target. In any case it could be offered as an Advanced User option, and I think it would certainly be a major enhancement, making the platform more efficient, giving a higher return to lenders and reducing the time to operate an AC lender account. Discuss. Will take this all into account.
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Post by Duane Dibley on Dec 9, 2014 21:28:27 GMT
Which raises the question how do you maintain a sum of money in the MLIA to purchase a piece of a loan when it comes available, but at the same time have the income from the sale of another loan withdrawn when the loan is sold. That sounds like a perfectly usual and commonplace position to me. You want to sell some holdings because you want the money, hardly an unexpected scenario. This constant tinkering and retinkering is enough to drive people to distraction. The old website had its good points and it had its bad points but most people just accepted it for what it was and got on with the business of p2p investing and making money. Then the new website was introduced, which again had its good points and it had its bad points, and that was fine, but now it's constantly changing and no-one knows where they are or what's happening. If you do one particular action one day and get a result then it's perfectly reasonable to expect to get the same result the next day when you take the same action, but no you don't because someone's been tinkering about with it, changing things that don't need changing, constantly striving for improvement without a clear goal in mind. To me it seems that the new site has been introduced without proper testing, or they are trying to be all things to all people or they are using us as guinea-pigs for when legislative changes are made to p2p investing. It's like Ford introducing a new car which nobody has actually taken for a test drive but it's got some lovely new seat design and a fancy new colour schemes. It doesn't matter that it doesn't actually drive properly but hey just look at all the switches and the buttons. All the high tech gadgets count for nothing if you can't actually get from A to B without breaking down.
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mikes1531
Member of DD Central
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Post by mikes1531 on Dec 10, 2014 22:05:31 GMT
Which raises the question how do you maintain a sum of money in the MLIA to purchase a piece of a loan when it comes available, but at the same time have the income from the sale of another loan withdrawn when the loan is sold. That sounds like a perfectly usual and commonplace position to me. You want to sell some holdings because you want the money, hardly an unexpected scenario. I think chris explained quite adequately how to do that. If your targets are set to buy only the loans you want to buy then if you have cash in your MLIA it means there aren't any of the parts you want available. So if you then sell something and the proceeds go into your MLIA, they'll sit there until either desirable parts become available or you transfer some of the proceeds out to your CA and withdraw them. And if some desirable parts were to become available and use up some of the sale proceeds before you got around to withdrawing them, you'd then have to decide whether you really want to keep those parts or sell them and withdraw the money. If you do decide you do want to withdraw, it shouldn't be difficult at all to sell those parts because they're of loans that must not have a lot of availability or you'd previously have bought up parts to reach your target holding. So you offer those parts up for sale and chances are they'd sell in a matter of seconds. At which point you can withdraw however much cash you wish to -- leaving a bit of 'in case something comes up that I want' cash in the MLIA -- and reset your targets. It really doesn't sound that difficult to me.
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oldgrumpy
Member of DD Central
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Post by oldgrumpy on Dec 11, 2014 1:03:44 GMT
It has taken a long time to correct and update all the deficiencies of the MLIA system created on 22 October, and much of it I like, and have learned to use it so that it does just what I want, but to read the words ...we are looking to revamp the entire target system... just depresses me all over again.
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Post by Duane Dibley on Dec 11, 2014 20:24:13 GMT
It really doesn't sound that difficult to me. I agree it's not difficult. Not difficult at all. But then again I never said it was difficult. But maybe if it takes over two hundred words to explain it then maybe it could be simpler after all. The point I was making was why was it changed? It was working perfectly well before so why tinker around with it now? What was wrong with the way it was? In my opinion they should have introduced the new website and then left people to get used to how it worked, its good points and its bad points, rather than chopping and changing everything at the drop of a hat. Who's to say that someone won't come along next week and start tinkering again and change it back to how it was previously? Either they had confidence in their new website, that it worked properly and met their objectives or else they didn't. If an internet based company doesn't have confidence in its own website what does that tell you?
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Post by chris on Dec 11, 2014 21:10:12 GMT
Are you seriously criticising us and saying we have no confidence in our site because we dared to listen to our lenders and implement a simple change that was requested and that we agreed with?!
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Post by marek63 on Dec 12, 2014 10:42:44 GMT
Are you seriously criticising us and saying we have no confidence in our site because we dared to listen to our lenders and implement a simple change that was requested and that we agreed with?! Can I criticize you for working too hard, putting in ridiculous hours and not spending enough time with your young family. I love your devotion to Assetz. But I thought (maybe misread?) you had real small kids to play with, rather than the big kids on this forum  Merry Christmas to you all at AC; enjoy those kids while they are young!
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Post by chris on Dec 12, 2014 10:45:33 GMT
Are you seriously criticising us and saying we have no confidence in our site because we dared to listen to our lenders and implement a simple change that was requested and that we agreed with?! Can I criticize you for working too hard, putting in ridiculous hours and not spending enough time with your young family. I love your devotion to Assetz. But I thought (maybe misread?) you had real small kids to play with, rather than the big kids on this forum Merry Christmas to you all at AC; enjoy those kids while they are young! You may as I have an 8 month old daughter who certainly appreciates play time. She does however sleep a lot so there's plenty of time to work during those naps. Merry Christmas to you as well, hope you enjoy the break.
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mikes1531
Member of DD Central
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Post by mikes1531 on Dec 16, 2014 4:03:44 GMT
I've had something odd happen in my account on Monday.
I make a note of the value of my account at the end of the day. Normally I can add the interest credited to my account the following day and find that the resulting total matches the value of my account at the end of that day within a penny or two. (I'd also have to adjust for any deposits or withdrawals, but I haven't made any of those lately.)
This didn't work on Monday. Somewhere between the end of Friday and the end of Monday my account went up in value by £25.19 more than I can explain.
I haven't a clue what might have caused this. It's as if one (or more) of my holdings was revalued upwards. Or a holding wasn't reduced by a capital repayment that was received.
Has anyone else seen anything similar happen?
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Post by chris on Dec 16, 2014 7:43:06 GMT
I've had something odd happen in my account on Monday. I make a note of the value of my account at the end of the day. Normally I can add the interest credited to my account the following day and find that the resulting total matches the value of my account at the end of that day within a penny or two. (I'd also have to adjust for any deposits or withdrawals, but I haven't made any of those lately.) This didn't work on Monday. Somewhere between the end of Friday and the end of Monday my account went up in value by £25.19 more than I can explain. I haven't a clue what might have caused this. It's as if one (or more) of my holdings was revalued upwards. Or a holding wasn't reduced by a capital repayment that was received. Has anyone else seen anything similar happen? Do you have a holding in Kid********** Br****? When the repayment was run the wrong payment period was selected resulting in the system distributing funds incorrectly. Interest for the period Dec - Jan has been paid in full as if the loan units were held for that entire period, and interest accrued in Nov - Dec is still accrued, explaining the jump. I'm still discussing internally how best to correct that, it's not an easy fix as many lenders no longer have sufficient funds to simply reverse the transaction. It will self correct on the 12th Jan when the next payment is made and we can settle the earlier payment but we're trying to come up with a better solution.
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ianb
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Post by ianb on Dec 16, 2014 8:42:08 GMT
Per mikes1531 I also had an unexpected gift from the software yesterday of 10.88. Part of that was explained by Ac*** which showed a capital repayment but where my loan balance had not been reduced (but this was only 90% of the issue). I rang Stephen at AC and he has the details. |
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sqh
Member of DD Central
Before P2P, savers put a guinea in a piggy bank, now they smash the banks to become guinea pigs.
Posts: 1,428
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Post by sqh on Dec 16, 2014 10:47:16 GMT
I've had something odd happen in my account on Monday. I make a note of the value of my account at the end of the day. Normally I can add the interest credited to my account the following day and find that the resulting total matches the value of my account at the end of that day within a penny or two. (I'd also have to adjust for any deposits or withdrawals, but I haven't made any of those lately.) This didn't work on Monday. Somewhere between the end of Friday and the end of Monday my account went up in value by £25.19 more than I can explain. I haven't a clue what might have caused this. It's as if one (or more) of my holdings was revalued upwards. Or a holding wasn't reduced by a capital repayment that was received. Has anyone else seen anything similar happen? Do you have a holding in Kid********** Br****? When the repayment was run the wrong payment period was selected resulting in the system distributing funds incorrectly. Interest for the period Dec - Jan has been paid in full as if the loan units were held for that entire period, and interest accrued in Nov - Dec is still accrued, explaining the jump. I'm still discussing internally how best to correct that, it's not an easy fix as many lenders no longer have sufficient funds to simply reverse the transaction. It will self correct on the 12th Jan when the next payment is made and we can settle the earlier payment but we're trying to come up with a better solution. My calculation for Kid********** Br**** shows only one month's interest has been paid, but it is based purely on my holding on Dec 12th. I bought about 10% of my holding between Nov12th-Dec12th, so for these, I should have only received the accrued interest from date of purchase. Actually, it wouldn't make much difference because 80% of these purchases were made early, between Nov 12th-Nov 18th. I estimate a gain of about 75p on a holding of £2500. Of course those nett sellers would be worse off. I don't understand why it would self correct next month.
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Post by phlitb on Dec 16, 2014 11:20:28 GMT
My account value has dropped by £3.21 which corresponds to an MLIA purchase for the same amount for #38 Ac*** made in the early hours of this morning
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