An update from Lending Works

I am new here so please bear with me if I am covering old ground. I have read through the posts about LW since last November & see that some people report getting interest. Are you sure? I ask because I saw the same in my November Loan Book which seemed strange as interest was added on some (not all) loans & some of these no longer existed. It puzzled me but the total amount seemed familiar & from out of nowhere came an idea. When I checked back to my transaction sheets to when I first made investments I found the same amounts listed as Quick Withdraw. These used to be separate to the interest totals but it seems LW are now adding these in with the interest, presumably so they can take this back as part of the so-called -2% Shield contributions. Speaking of which, my wife & I have had 6 loans where the full amount of interest earned has been deducted as part of that contribution. Well, I say the full amount when, in fact, they have left that part which is less than 1p. Enquiries to LW meet with the usual gobbledegook which explains nothing. MI5 could learn important lessons about secrecy from LW. I have no doubt that every full penny of interest on my remaining loans will, over the next few months, be taken.
I see some posters (is that the correct term?) are hoping to redeem their loans when it is possible to do so and quoting LW's fee of 0.5%. I hope that's all you are charged but don't forget LW also levy a Quick Withdraw Charge (or whatever it is called now) based on the interest rate they will sell the loan on at and what you are receiving now (possibly zero% or even -2%) so if the new investor gets 4% you will be charged that 4% (or possibly 6%) for the full term remaining on your investments.
We pulled out in early January because we no longer felt we could trust LW and had fees of £4000 deducted. That meant that our return was less than we could have got in a fixed rate savings account with a bank with full protection. We were left with about £1000 still with LW because we were not allowed to redeem those investments because the borrowers were in arrears. We, of course, complained to LW about this as we felt we were being punished by LW when the problem lay with their poor credit worthiness decisions. They rejected our complaint & had the nerve to tell us how wonderful their credit checks were! A complaint to the ombudsman was made - 6 months later we received an email asking for some documents we had already supplied. Fortunately I had made digital copies and sent these back via email. I have heard nothing since, but would advise others to also complain & then maybe something might get done. That maybe wishful thinking!
We now just hope that we will eventually get back the remains of our investments but that may take years if at all. LW have allowed some borrowers to extend the period of their loans and, judging by the amount of capital being paid (and I'm not taking the -2% deductions from these), it will be 2039 before they do so. I am will into retirement & will be very lucky indeed to live to that date, even without covid.
Good luck to all who read this and be safe during this pandemic.

See below taken from the terms and conditions.

15.5 To use Quick Withdraw under the Growth Product, you agree to pay the charges set out below:

(a) An administration fee payable to Lending Works which will be levied on the total amount you wish to Quick Withdraw. The amount of the administration fee will be calculated as 0.5% of the total amount withdrawn.

We will always specify and clearly disclose to you the administration fee payable prior to you completing the Quick Withdraw process.

(b) If there is an interest rate shortfall between the interest rate under the Loan Agreement (under which your rights are being sold) and the rate of interest available to a new Lender on the same Lender Product at the time of sale, your Loan will be sold at a discount, reflecting any interest shortfall payable to the new Lender(s).

We will deduct both amounts from the proceeds of sale with the balance being credited to your Wallet.

15.6 If you Quick Withdraw using the Flexible Product, you will not incur any transaction fees or charges, but you cannot make any new Lending Offers for a period of 28 days after selling loans within the Flexible Product.

15.7 Lending Works cannot guarantee that you will be able to use the Quick Withdraw process at any time. This is entirely dependent on the availability of Lenders willing to purchase your rights under the Loan Agreements. All Quick Withdraw requests will be processed in the order in which they are received by us and on a ‘first come, first served’ basis.

Hi  This is Decleoro,  had some trouble logging in so hope this comes out.

Firstly those of you who have money in RATESETTER not Lending works.  An email was sent out this morning to say that Ratesetter will be closing in April and all money will be returned to investers as well as interest etc.  it has been taken over.  no one will loose anything. 

Back to LENDING WORKS. The money in LW is almost half of what it was at the beginning of 2020.  During the time since then i have managed to get about a third of my money back, I am now increasingly concerned that it looks like real capital will be eroded at this rate and things will be much worse than we have recently been led to believe.  I am very worried.  What do any you think?  Also the statistics show that predominantly retail investors US are about 99%  Any thoughts??

Ace - as I understand it and I may be wrong, the latest performance stats has a table showing which cohorts are still being charged negative interest rates and at what level for each cohort - there are only two years affected. If you download your loanbook and sort by year of start (not when you purchased that loan, because they are not always the same year), then you should be able to calculate the impact fairly accurately. Have had some repayments this week and the reductions look about in line with what I have calculated. Is this your view also? Just trying to triangulate as it were! Cheers P