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Post by Ton ⓉⓞⓃ on Nov 3, 2014 12:00:00 GMT
The quick way to stop the AI is 1) ensure that there is no money in your manual investment account; and 2) ensure that your default setting for that account is to "withdraw" all repayments (which doesn't mean withdraw to your bank, but withdraw from the manual investment account to your cash account within AC). This is what I've done until AC sort out the amortizing loans issue. It's somewhat ironic that they called the manual account "manual" when in fact a lot of AI stuff happens automatically without authorization if you don't watch it like a hawk. After you've done 1) and 2) you should go through all your loans ensuring that the target is set the same as the capital amount (or less if you want to sell). Don't set the target to zero unless you want to sell out of the loan entirely. Hi Geoffrey. Thanks for the steer but I had already done that. However it appears that interest payments and repayments of capital all come into my MAI and are likely to get pumped out to loans I do not want to add to. I have had a fiddle over the weekend and will see what happens now. However I still think it is unforgivable of AC to implement this system in this way without first making sure investors know what is going to happen.
I am beginning to hear the call of the "Go Away Bird" if it gets much loader that is exactly what I will do.
You can change where the the interest and capital repayments end up. Two steps, first click on the button shown below,  After you've clicked on the above button the window below will pop up  Now just follow the instructions deciding where you want your repayments to go. When it says 'Withdraw' this means withdraw to your AC Cash Account. I must admit it's not absolutely clear at first glance...
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merlin
Minor shareholder in Assetz and many other companies.
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Post by merlin on Nov 3, 2014 12:45:06 GMT
Hi Geoffrey. Thanks for the steer but I had already done that. However it appears that interest payments and repayments of capital all come into my MAI and are likely to get pumped out to loans I do not want to add to. I have had a fiddle over the weekend and will see what happens now. However I still think it is unforgivable of AC to implement this system in this way without first making sure investors know what is going to happen.
I am beginning to hear the call of the "Go Away Bird" if it gets much loader that is exactly what I will do.
You can change where the the interest and capital repayments end up. Two steps, first click on the button shown below, After you've clicked on the above button the window below will pop up Now just follow the instructions deciding where you want your repayments to go. When it says 'Withdraw' this means withdraw to your AC Cash Account. I must admit it's not absolutely clear at first glance... Thanks Ton for the steer but had already done all that on Saturday. Have checked everything else and ensured that I have no requests to purchase or sell on my account. Now if anything else gets purchased or sold without my direct consent I will pull all my and my wife's holdings forthwith.
I still have not been able to resolve how items were bought/sold from my account earlier without my permission but as you say either AC passed a bum file over or there is a bug in the system. Could not contact AC this am as I have been in meetings but will try to contact them later this pm or failing that by email.
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merlin
Minor shareholder in Assetz and many other companies.
Posts: 902
Likes: 302
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Post by merlin on Nov 3, 2014 17:17:54 GMT
I have spoken to two people at AC this afternoon and am left with the impression that there is a significant problem with either the design of the system or its implementation. My problems that kicked off this thread are not mine alone but affect other people who have made similar complaints to AC staff. According to what I have been told by AC staff a solution is being sought but no timescale has been quoted for implementation. In other words be patient and keep your fingers crossed.
Still feeling serious annoyed but will allow AC a bit more breathing space before calling it a day!
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Post by chris on Nov 3, 2014 22:31:07 GMT
I have spoken to two people at AC this afternoon and am left with the impression that there is a significant problem with either the design of the system or its implementation. My problems that kicked off this thread are not mine alone but affect other people who have made similar complaints to AC staff. According to what I have been told by AC staff a solution is being sought but no timescale has been quoted for implementation. In other words be patient and keep your fingers crossed.
Still feeling serious annoyed but will allow AC a bit more breathing space before calling it a day! The problem has been one of our making where in an effort to simplify the controls we've gone too far and have ended up making the system behave in a way that lenders do not want in that all loans with a holding have to have a manual investment target set. This has been defaulted to either your holdings at the time the site went live or imported from your previous auto invest targets. The latter was a last minute addition at the request of this forum and in our haste to implement it the night before go-live we overlooked the advanced options some lenders had set that prohibited the AI system from buying and / or selling loan units. The behaviour of the system on amortising loans where the target doesn't amortise has also caught out lenders. In our defence this has been widely posted about on the forum and we have said we are making changes. Tomorrow morning a fix will be going live that will allow lenders to activate and deactivate the manual invest system on a loan by loan basis, in effect freezing your holding in a given loan. You can edit your target in either state, it will only be effective if the system is active for that loan. In discussions with lenders, and in the poll thread, it has been stated by many that this would be a good stop gap solution restoring the system to a state they would view as functional for them. In the next few weeks, targeting but not promising a launch in November, we'll be redesigning the manual investment system to operate more like stocks and shares buy and sell orders. You will be able to create a buy or sell order with an expiry time - e.g. invest £1,000 as quickly as possible but stop after 1 week. Buying / selling with mark down will be returning at this time, and the plan is to include a minimum mark down on buy orders. I expect you will be able to have multiple buy and sell orders operating in parallel (e.g. sell £500 at 0% mark down but buy £100 with a minimum of a 2% discount), but the full spec is still being written and the user interface needs to be designed. Because of the potential to make this a complicated system we need to take our time to make sure the interface is as intuitive, elegant, and simple to use as possible - so this upgrade will be released when its ready rather than to a set deadline. It is my hope that this solution will negate the need for amortising targets (and therefore the system changing the targets) whilst providing more power and flexibility without the confusion.
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Post by bracknellboy on Nov 3, 2014 22:46:20 GMT
I have spoken to two people at AC this afternoon and am left with the impression that there is a significant problem with either the design of the system or its implementation. My problems that kicked off this thread are not mine alone but affect other people who have made similar complaints to AC staff. According to what I have been told by AC staff a solution is being sought but no timescale has been quoted for implementation. In other words be patient and keep your fingers crossed.
Still feeling serious annoyed but will allow AC a bit more breathing space before calling it a day! ....Tomorrow morning a fix will be going live that will allow lenders to activate and deactivate the manual invest system on a loan by loan basis, in effect freezing your holding in a given loan. ... ...You will be able to create a buy or sell order with an expiry time - e.g. invest £1,000 as quickly as possible but stop after 1 week. Buying / selling with mark down will be returning at this time, and the plan is to include a minimum mark down on buy orders. I expect you will be able to have multiple buy and sell orders operating in parallel (e.g. sell £500 at 0% mark down but buy £100 with a minimum of a 2% discount), but the full spec is still being written and the user interface needs to be designed. Because of the potential to make this a complicated system we need to take our time to make sure the interface is as intuitive, elegant, and simple to use as possible - so this upgrade will be released when its ready rather than to a set deadline. It is my hope that this solution will negate the need for amortising targets (and therefore the system changing the targets) whilst providing more power and flexibility without the confusion. : on the first point. Is this related to the 'opt-out' button that I've noticed and been curious about but been too wary to press (in case it instantly sells all my current holding in that loan) ? On the second point. Sounds like its on the right track. Worthwhile standing up a test system and giving a few lenders the opportunity to interact with it to give feedback ?? (in regard to it being intuitive and simple to use - not so sure about the elegant: elegant is a characteristic (or not) of the underlying model which allows something to be intuitive and simple to use rather than being a user experience in its own right: but its just words...).
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Post by chris on Nov 3, 2014 22:49:06 GMT
....Tomorrow morning a fix will be going live that will allow lenders to activate and deactivate the manual invest system on a loan by loan basis, in effect freezing your holding in a given loan. ... ...You will be able to create a buy or sell order with an expiry time - e.g. invest £1,000 as quickly as possible but stop after 1 week. Buying / selling with mark down will be returning at this time, and the plan is to include a minimum mark down on buy orders. I expect you will be able to have multiple buy and sell orders operating in parallel (e.g. sell £500 at 0% mark down but buy £100 with a minimum of a 2% discount), but the full spec is still being written and the user interface needs to be designed. Because of the potential to make this a complicated system we need to take our time to make sure the interface is as intuitive, elegant, and simple to use as possible - so this upgrade will be released when its ready rather than to a set deadline. It is my hope that this solution will negate the need for amortising targets (and therefore the system changing the targets) whilst providing more power and flexibility without the confusion. : on the first point. Is this related to the 'opt-out' button that I've noticed and been curious about but been too wary to press (in case it instantly sells all my current holding in that loan) ? On the second point. Sounds like its on the right track. Worthwhile standing up a test system and giving a few lenders the opportunity to interact with it to give feedback ?? (in regard to it being intuitive and simple to use - not so sure about the elegant: elegant is a characteristic (or not) of the underlying model which allows something to be intuitive and simple to use rather than being a user experience in its own right: but its just words...). Nope opt-out was launched accidentally as it relates to creating your own products. With the automated investment system you can create your own investment strategies and rules, but opt-out lets you override those to prevent your products from investing in that loan. On your second point I'm planning to put together a group like that over the next couple of weeks.
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mikes1531
Member of DD Central
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Post by mikes1531 on Nov 3, 2014 23:17:45 GMT
Does anyone know whether the Repayments control affects only 'external' capital and interest credits? If I have it set to 'Withdraw' and I sell a loan unit, where will the sale proceeds end up? In my Cash account? Or in my MLIA?
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Post by yorkshireman on Nov 3, 2014 23:22:08 GMT
What a shambles!
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mikes1531
Member of DD Central
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Post by mikes1531 on Nov 4, 2014 2:23:22 GMT
Is this related to the 'opt-out' button that I've noticed and been curious about but been too wary to press (in case it instantly sells all my current holding in that loan) ? You could always experiment with it on a loan you have no interest in. That's what I did.
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Post by geoffrey on Nov 4, 2014 8:59:09 GMT
Is this related to the 'opt-out' button that I've noticed and been curious about but been too wary to press (in case it instantly sells all my current holding in that loan) ? You could always experiment with it on a loan you have no interest in. That's what I did. I believe others have discovered that "opt-out" *will* sell all your holdings of the loan in question, by zeroing your target. It literally is a way of saying "I don't and never will want any part of this loan". Designed for the "funds" mechanism, so that you can invest an overall (diversified) sum in, say, the "Green Energy Fund", while excluding specific loans that you consider to be unacceptable. At least, that's my limited understanding of it.
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Post by batchoy on Nov 4, 2014 9:33:44 GMT
Does anyone know whether the Repayments control affects only 'external' capital and interest credits? If I have it set to 'Withdraw' and I sell a loan unit, where will the sale proceeds end up? In my Cash account? Or in my MLIA? If you have the income set to 'Withdraw' it all goes into your cash account, however don't expect to be able to account for it properly as the statements are screwed up when you switch to withdraw mode. As soon as you switch to withdraw all the transactions in the MLIA end up on the cash statement, you don't get what you should get which is a income transaction in the MLIA statement and then corresponding transactions on the MLIA and CA statements to cover the transfer. This statement issue combined with the enormous workload currently required just to maintain a % holding in loans means that I am now on a phased withdrawal from the platform, no new money is being added to the platform, income is being pulled off as it is received and any outstanding shadow bids are being covered by sales of existing holdings. Plus my view is that if sales don't go through in time to cover outstanding shadow bids then though, I didn't create an inoperable system.
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bigfoot12
Member of DD Central
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Post by bigfoot12 on Nov 4, 2014 9:37:16 GMT
Does anyone know whether the Repayments control affects only 'external' capital and interest credits? If I have it set to 'Withdraw' and I sell a loan unit, where will the sale proceeds end up? In my Cash account? Or in my MLIA? You could always experiment with it on a loan you have no interest in. That's what I did. The sale proceeds went into my cash account.
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mikes1531
Member of DD Central
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Post by mikes1531 on Nov 4, 2014 11:06:24 GMT
You could always experiment with it on a loan you have no interest in. That's what I did. I believe others have discovered that "opt-out" *will* sell all your holdings of the loan in question, by zeroing your target. That's what the available info suggests Opt-Out will do, but at this moment it didn't do that when I tried it on my holding of LtL1. I had a target of £10, and was holding less than that because this is a very small loan and rarely appears on the Aftermarket. I could see no changes as a result of opting out -- my target still is £10 -- other than the loan now appearing on my list of opted-out loans. I presume this is because the Opt-Out feature has not been activated even though it accidentally was made visible when the new system was released. When it finally is activated, I expect it will put my LtL1 holding up for sale -- unless it isn't designed to be used with MLIA and only works with Bespoke Investment Accounts. I'm willing to wait and see, and potentially have my LtL1 position sold off.
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baneybo
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Post by baneybo on Nov 4, 2014 14:13:36 GMT
It's clear there was no analysis of how investors were using the old site before the new site was implemented. It's also clear that the developers' testing (assuming there was any) was inadequate. It's all very much a dog's dinner, and to make things worse, AC are now playing investors off against the developers, instead of accepting responsibility for the mess and sorting things out to investors' satisfaction.
Here's an example of the madness:
Interest and capital repayment loans act to effectively increase the investment targets for such loans, resulting in the system purchasing tiny loan units to make up the difference instead of making the repayments available for new investments - suddenly previous manual investment decisions have been replaced with automatic system. Several people have suggested the way around this is to make sure the 'On repayment' option is set to 'Withdraw repayments'; apparently this will move repayments into your Cash Account.
But supposing I wanted to purchase £500-worth of loan units in an upcoming loan which has an imminent drawdown? I'll need to move £500 from my cash account into my so-called manual investment account to underwrite a target investment of £500 I've set for that loan. The snag is that the system immediately sees that £500 as available for investment in other loans where the target investment is higher than the current holding, and before you know it your £500 starts disappearing...
As I see it, the only way currently around this is for the investor to constantly re-adjust target investment amounts so they match current holding.
Madness!
AC owe us all an apology.
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oldgrumpy
Member of DD Central
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Post by oldgrumpy on Nov 4, 2014 15:07:10 GMT
AC has been far too slow to rectify these unwanted effects of the site "improvement", but maybe that is a result of the corrections actually being difficult and complex to apply without further "damage". Chris has acknowledged elsewhere that some of the problems have been of AC's own making, so all we can do is let AC get on with it; repetition of the disquiet won't speed anything up.
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