|
Post by gaspilot on Oct 31, 2014 10:43:51 GMT
Has anybody got any experience of lending through thebridgingcrowd?
|
|
gb007
Member of DD Central
Posts: 131
Likes: 74
|
Post by gb007 on Mar 24, 2015 18:43:35 GMT
Has anybody got any experience of lending through thebridgingcrowd? gaspilot did you dip any toes here?
|
|
shimself
Member of DD Central
Posts: 2,560
Likes: 1,169
|
Post by shimself on Mar 24, 2015 20:15:40 GMT
Well they didn't do English at school. Which puts me off, even though perhaps it shouldn't
The director’s and partner’s invest their own money into every single deal. Bridging is a quick business. The clients often require the money quickly. To ensure this, we personally fund each deal in its entirety to ensure that deal completes on time. As a member, you are offered to join these deals jointly with our funds before the deal, or directly after it. We will never offer a deal that we do not lend into ourselves. As such, we lend your money as if it is ours and take the same precautions and underwriting criteria as we would with our own.
Weirdly the website is thebridgecrowd but the name is the bridgingcrowd
But then this bit sounds great
Average Return to Investors 12% pa
We’ve been involved in Bridging Loans since ***** see below 1998
5-10 deals per month to invest in £1,500,000 loans per month
Capital Losses Since We Began Lending 0
Min 5K investment per deal, or 30K depends which bit of the website you read
It's true p2p, ie the loan documents are between the lender and the borrower
*** the directors are aged 32 and 27, so they were aged 16 and 11 when they started! Richard Branson eat your heart out! I've emailed ask Duedil says the 32 yr old has been a director of 8ish companies which have ceased trading since he was aged 21.
Do your own research I suggest.
|
|
|
Post by bracknellboy on Mar 24, 2015 22:06:50 GMT
...We’ve been involved in Bridging Loans since ***** see below 1998...
*** the directors are aged 32 and 27, so they were aged 16 and 11 when they started! Richard Branson eat your heart out! I've emailed ask
Meccano and Lego bridges perhaps ?
|
|
mikes1531
Member of DD Central
Posts: 6,452
Likes: 2,320
|
Post by mikes1531 on Mar 24, 2015 22:21:05 GMT
As a member, you are offered to join these deals jointly with our funds before the deal, or directly after it.It's true p2p, ie the loan documents are between the lender and the borrower I can see how the documents easily could be between the investor and the borrower if the investment is made before drawdown, but ISTM that it's not as easy afterwards. Then again, other P2P platforms probably need to do something similar whenever a loan part changes hands after drawdown, so it ought to be possible. Duedil says the 32 yr old has been a director of 8ish companies which have ceased trading since he was aged 21. That's not exactly confidence building, is it?
|
|
am
Posts: 1,495
Likes: 601
|
Post by am on Mar 24, 2015 23:35:04 GMT
As a member, you are offered to join these deals jointly with our funds before the deal, or directly after it.It's true p2p, ie the loan documents are between the lender and the borrower I can see how the documents easily could be between the investor and the borrower if the investment is made before drawdown, but ISTM that it's not as easy afterwards. Then again, other P2P platforms probably need to do something similar whenever a loan part changes hands after drawdown, so it ought to be possible. Duedil says the 32 yr old has been a director of 8ish companies which have ceased trading since he was aged 21. That's not exactly confidence building, is it? Is it possible to tell whether they were "normal" companies or SPVs?
|
|
|
Post by batchoy on Mar 25, 2015 0:03:12 GMT
I can see how the documents easily could be between the investor and the borrower if the investment is made before drawdown, but ISTM that it's not as easy afterwards. Then again, other P2P platforms probably need to do something similar whenever a loan part changes hands after drawdown, so it ought to be possible. That's not exactly confidence building, is it? Is it possible to tell whether they were "normal" companies or SPVs? They look like normal companies, typically clothing or food related nothing finance related.
|
|
shimself
Member of DD Central
Posts: 2,560
Likes: 1,169
|
Post by shimself on Mar 25, 2015 7:38:06 GMT
As a member, you are offered to join these deals jointly with our funds before the deal, or directly after it.It's true p2p, ie the loan documents are between the lender and the borrower I can see how the documents easily could be between the investor and the borrower if the investment is made before drawdown, but ISTM that it's not as easy afterwards. Then again, other P2P platforms probably need to do something similar whenever a loan part changes hands after drawdown, so it ought to be possible. It's called Novation I think en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novation
|
|
|
Post by gaspilot on Mar 25, 2015 9:21:43 GMT
Hi All
Yes, I've dipped a toe in here. I had a phone call with Louis from bridging crowd before I started investing and he was quite reassuring about the process. It's a different platform to most of the other sites as most transactions are done via email with documents being signed digitally. Investment opportunities are via invite via email too. So far the procedures have been easy and I haven't experienced any hiccups. The interest is paid monthly (1%) directly to your bank account. Sadly the minimum investment is £5,000 which might put a lot of people off.
|
|
am
Posts: 1,495
Likes: 601
|
Post by am on Mar 25, 2015 9:41:37 GMT
Hi All Yes, I've dipped a toe in here. I had a phone call with Louis from bridging crowd before I started investing and he was quite reassuring about the process. It's a different platform to most of the other sites as most transactions are done via email with documents being signed digitally. Investment opportunities are via invite via email too. So far the procedures have been easy and I haven't experienced any hiccups. The interest is paid monthly (1%) directly to your bank account. Sadly the minimum investment is £5,000 which might put a lot of people off. If the transactions are done via email it's quite possible that the system can't cope with a lot of people involved in each loan, so they would have to have largish minimum investments.
|
|
|
Post by batchoy on Mar 25, 2015 10:10:53 GMT
Hi All Yes, I've dipped a toe in here. I had a phone call with Louis from bridging crowd before I started investing and he was quite reassuring about the process. It's a different platform to most of the other sites as most transactions are done via email with documents being signed digitally. Investment opportunities are via invite via email too. So far the procedures have been easy and I haven't experienced any hiccups. The interest is paid monthly (1%) directly to your bank account. Sadly the minimum investment is £5,000 which might put a lot of people off. If the transactions are done via email it's quite possible that the system can't cope with a lot of people involved in each loan, so they would have to have largish minimum investments. I'm not overly happy with transacting via email, security wise this akin to doing all your transactions on the back of the postcard and sending it through the post, and emails can get easily waylaid by over zealous spam/virus filters as people have been reporting on this forum. It is also very easy to claim to have lost/never received emails that have been overlooked/inadvertently deleted.
|
|
bugs4me
Member of DD Central
Posts: 1,841
Likes: 1,466
|
Post by bugs4me on Mar 25, 2015 10:47:10 GMT
Quick bit of DD. Both names - bridgecrowd and bridgingcrowd are trading names of Social Money. Other subsidiaries are listed at the FCA as thestudentbank.co.uk and thestudentfinancecompany.co.uk plus maybe others.
Maybe they would like to pop their heads onto this forum and introduce themselves as they do appear to have their fingers in more than a couple of pies.
|
|
|
Post by thebridgecrowd on Mar 30, 2015 16:58:24 GMT
Dear All, Firstly thank you to Steve for emailing us and informing us of the thread. Very kind. I will try to answer the more pertinent points below in order; gaspilot - regarding the names theBridgeCrowd.com and BridgingCrowd.com. The company and the website initially started out as theBridgeCrowd.com. As we developed, some of our investors commented that they thought the company was a Bridge Club (cards) and not a lending / investment company. As such we decided to the change the name to the BridgingCrowd. We actively use both domains and both email address. Unfortunately due to the amount that had been spent to date on SEO and marketing for theBridgeCrowd and the goodwill that Google had attributed to it, our web team felt it more prescient to continue the dominant hosting at thebridgecrowd.com and hence why bridgingcrowd.com points to this domain name. shimself & Brackneilboy - regarding directors age and experience, I will explain more and be as transparent as possible. The primary shareholder and MD is Louis Alexander (32) 98% owner and his wife Charlotte Alexander (29), 2% owner. I, Louis Alexander was a commercial barrister and also an investor and co-founder of other companies. I sold my positions in the other companies and formed Social Money Ltd t/a the BridgingCrowd in 2012. Prior to this, the company was incubated and partnered under another bridging company called Braehead Finance Ltd from which it sources many of deals. This is bridging company that has been in operation since 2009 and is run by father who underwrites all the loans that the BridgingCrowd participate in. As a family we invest our funds in over half of every loan deal and offer the other half out to investors. My father has been involved in bridging for 25+ years. He was the senior accountant for the one of the largest shareholders of Jerrold Holdings and Lancashire Mortgage Corporation which is the the largest bridging and alternative finance company in the UK. To date, in all our loans via both companies (Braehead Finance and the BridgingCrowd) we have had zero capital losses with the former having succesfully traded through the credit crunch. shimself - regarding participating in the loan prior to or after completion. We offer two structures and it depends on the a) the size of the investors funds and b) the origination of the deal. In short - if an investor has substantial funds and can take whole loan parts (or large chunks) and they are contracted directly with the borrower (circa £500,000+ in investable funds). If the investor(s) wish to lend smaller funds over a large number of deals, the process is simpler and easier for the investors to be assigned part of the loan agreement with the borrower. We as family commit all our funds to each deal so that we can give the borrower comfort that we will complete on the first day that he / his broker enquires. The loan may or may not complete for a variety reasons, so rather than inform all investors of an upcoming deal that may or may not complete and waste investor(s) time, we only inform you of deals that are ready to complete. If no-one wishes to co-lend, then we take the whole loan. If they do, then great. But this system is the smoothest and simplest for us and based on the feedback we have had, our investors agree. gaspilot - thank you for recommending us below and dipping you toe in. batchoy - we do not currently offer an online platform that you can lend through. To date our investors have actually said that it is easier to commit via emails as they do not need to login / remember passwords and go direct to a website. They simply press reply to an email with the amount that they wish to invest. This helps if use your phones a lot for emails. Investors are then notified if they made it into the deal in time and to have the funds ready for completion by a certain date. It is quite straightforward. That being said, we have mooted having an online investable platform and I am keen to see what other people think about it? It would really help me if anyone on here has invested via us and via other online companies and let us know which they prefer and why. (Gaspilot I am looking at you here I will try to monitor this thread over the next few weeks. If you have any other questions please email me at Louis@thebridgecrowd.com or Investors@thebridgecrowd and we are happy to help.
Kind regards Louis Alexander MD
|
|
Jaydee
Member of DD Central
Posts: 415
Likes: 791
|
Post by Jaydee on Mar 31, 2015 9:26:56 GMT
How Much Can I Invest Into Each Deal? The minimum investment into each is deal is £30,000. There is no maximum.
|
|
|
Post by gaspilot on Mar 31, 2015 10:03:03 GMT
How Much Can I Invest Into Each Deal? The minimum investment into each is deal is £30,000. There is no maximum.
Hi James I'm not sure where you got that from but the minimum investment is actually £5,000.
|
|