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Post by euromike on Nov 6, 2014 17:20:46 GMT
Hi, and welcome everyone - this is my first post on this forum.
I've been active on FC for about ~14 months now, achieving a pre-tax return of about 9%, so I'm happy so far.
As of recently, however, I've realised that it's probably wise to have a bit more diversification - basically, too much of my overall "net worth" is tied up in this one platform, and now that I have some extra funds available to me, I think it would be nice to find alternative P2P platforms to invest in.
Here's what I've considered so far:
RateSetter, Zopa - their rates just don't seem high enough. 3% for 1 year deposits, 4% for 3 years...
MarketInvoice - very attractive concept, but they don't accept many more investors, they rejected my application at the time (late 2013)
ThinCats - there just aren't that many loans on offer, it looked as if they simply were 1/20th of FundingCircle with pretty much the same risk profile. I want my risk spread over (ideally) hundreds of different loans, and on ThinCats it seemed that it would take months to have even 50 borrowers. For example, as of now there are only 5 borrowers looking to raise money between now and 24 days from now. On FC, there are 10 or 15 every day
These 4, along with FundingCircle, were the top 5 largest p2p sites in the UK at the time I checked. ThinCats, which were #5 in terms of amount of loans originated, were already not that liquid, so I figured there wasn't any point in going further down the list.
Abroad:
LendingClub - I spoke to them and it seemed (again, that was in late 2013) really, really difficult for a non-US based investor to invest with them.
Any other ideas?
thanks
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Post by GSV3MIaC on Nov 6, 2014 18:27:18 GMT
Try rebuilding society maybe .. Sort of FC clone but much much smaller (so far).
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min
Member of DD Central
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Post by min on Nov 6, 2014 20:28:36 GMT
My alternatives are Assetz Capital and Funding Knight. Both have issues with defaults/late payers but communication is excellent and transparent. Trying to move FC investment into these two. |
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jimbo
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Post by jimbo on Nov 6, 2014 21:27:57 GMT
I just wish Funding Knight had more loans. They're growing, but nowhere near as fast as FC did...
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gb007
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Post by gb007 on Nov 6, 2014 22:44:36 GMT
I have found ThinCats to provide a regular supply of quality secured loans. SavingStream and Ablrate also offer the higher rates you're looking for and can play a part of a diversified portfolio.  |
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Post by euromike on Nov 7, 2014 8:24:25 GMT
what about LendInvest guys? They claim to have lent £166mln so far, which would make them 5th largest P2P lender in the UK, larger than ThinCats and 20x larger than FundingKnight, for example. I just don't understand the business concept - these loans are supposedly secured against property, i.e. they're basically p2p mortgages. Why would any prospective home buyer borrow on LendInvest at 8% when mortgages are to be had for as low as 1.5%??
EDIT: I spoke to LendInvest. the minimum investment is £10,000, not in total though - here's the caveat - per loan. Basically, it'd be very difficult to achieve any diversification, unless you invest hundreds of thousands of £'s. They did explain to me on the phone that their loans are fully asset-backed, and that they have "first claim" (presumably a legal term, which I'm not very familiar with, hence the quotation marks) on properties in question - I'm still not convinced. I'll pass
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Post by lynnanthony on Nov 8, 2014 16:38:12 GMT
Hi, and welcome everyone - this is my first post on this forum. I've been active on FC for about ~14 months now, achieving a pre-tax return of about 9%, so I'm happy so far. 9%? After dead time / charges / failures I take it? That's not bad. How much time do you spend to achieve that? I gave up with FC about a year ago because it was too time consuming. I mainly use Assetz and Thincats these days with small excursions elsewhere to check out other sites. The advantage of Assetz and Thincats is that you don't need to visit frequently to re-bid in auctions - a lot of loans are fixed rate (all are on Assetz) and Thincats has dynamic bidding. Both sites have secondary markets so getting invested does not have to take too long. As I write there are nineteen loans with parts for sale on the secondary market at Assetz. (To be accurate, there is no primary market on Assetz now; everything is bought on the secondary market.) You refer to Thincats as "having the same risk profile [as FC]". Unless things have changed on FC since I left, most FC loans are unsecured. Not so on Assetz and Thincats. Does that not alter the risk profile?
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shimself
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Post by shimself on Nov 8, 2014 19:25:36 GMT
TheHousecrowd also of this parish might be worth a look for you (buy to let in £1000 chunks in p2p arrangement)
TC also have a secondary market which gets quite active in mid-month, you could easily invest 25 x £1000 in a month.
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Post by euromike on Nov 9, 2014 16:06:49 GMT
9%? After dead time / charges / failures I take it? That's not bad. How much time do you spend to achieve that? I gave up with FC about a year ago because it was too time consuming. I mainly use Assetz and Thincats these days with small excursions elsewhere to check out other sites. The advantage of Assetz and Thincats is that you don't need to visit frequently to re-bid in auctions - a lot of loans are fixed rate (all are on Assetz) and Thincats has dynamic bidding. Both sites have secondary markets so getting invested does not have to take too long. As I write there are nineteen loans with parts for sale on the secondary market at Assetz. (To be accurate, there is no primary market on Assetz now; everything is bought on the secondary market.) You refer to Thincats as "having the same risk profile [as FC]". Unless things have changed on FC since I left, most FC loans are unsecured. Not so on Assetz and Thincats. Does that not alter the risk profile? Just over 9% is my annualised return after ~1.5 years of lending. Net of fees and defaults. Not counting dead time though. So what I have to do is, keep the uninvested portion somewhere else earning interest, or perhaps in a money-market ETF, and gradually feed it into my FC account. My portfolio is split (roughly) 20/25/25/20/10 between A+/A/B/C/C- . Yes it takes some effort, I was doing the bidding mostly manually. Good point about secured vs. unsecured loans. Yes that changes the risk profile quite a bit. Then again, how many loans can you enter into on ThinCats over, say, 1 month? With FC it's quite easy to diversify your risk into literally hundreds of borrowers, with ThinCats I was under the impression that only a few (<10) loans are available for investment over the course of several weeks?
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pikestaff
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Post by pikestaff on Nov 9, 2014 16:32:20 GMT
...I can't delete the post though Yes you can! There is a delete option in the right-hand drop down menu of your post (the thing that looks like a cogwheel). Edit: re TC and diversification: Yes, there are far fewer loans, less than 10 per month and fewer than 100 about 150 unique borrowers. (AC is similar, but you can invest in much smaller chunks.) It is therefore unrealistic to target the massive diversification that many people go for on FC. It's more realistic, on both these platforms, to think about diversification in the context of your investment portfolio as a whole. Once I'd got my head around this I decided that I was happy with TC and AC, and that's where most of my my p2p money is now (along with Ratesetter 5 yrs). Like lynnanthony, I gave up on FC because I thought it was too much work. I would say, though, that the quality of security on TC is pretty variable so do your DD before you buy. Always read the documentation and the Q&A: investor DD is stronger on TC than on any of the other platforms IMO.
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