merlin
Minor shareholder in Assetz and many other companies.
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Post by merlin on Dec 7, 2013 16:06:47 GMT
H Guys and Gals.
This a what I hoped this Forum would turn out to be, honest, frank and open. It is already providing a quality Q & A platform for all of us to join in and getting the answers we need and no deleting of the awkward questions. I only hope FC will have the courage to follow suit but my best guess is that they wont!
As to the optical offering I will hold my hand until the outstanding questions have answers and I have bled a bit more of my investments out of FC.
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bugs4me
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Post by bugs4me on Dec 7, 2013 16:23:15 GMT
H Guys and Gals. This a what I hoped this Forum would turn out to be, honest, frank and open. It is already providing a quality Q & A platform for all of us to join in and getting the answers we need and no deleting of the awkward questions. I only hope FC will have the courage to follow suit but my best guess is that they wont! As to the optical offering I will hold my hand until the outstanding questions have answers and I have bled a bit more of my investments out of FC. Going OT but are FC contributing to these forums in any way?
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bugs4me
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Post by bugs4me on Dec 7, 2013 16:31:59 GMT
If Assetz doesn't wish to work at the weekend, and borrowers don't wish to be answering questions at the weekend, that's fine -- I would have thought that it's anything but fine. Running a business is not a 9-5 job - it tends to be 24/7 especially as we are not dealing with a large company here. Asking for finance at short notice then you should be available to answer relevant questions. ATM all we have to go on is the front page of a credit report which contains minimal information.
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mikes1531
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Post by mikes1531 on Dec 7, 2013 16:55:29 GMT
If Assetz doesn't wish to work at the weekend, and borrowers don't wish to be answering questions at the weekend, that's fine -- I would have thought that it's anything but fine. Running a business is not a 9-5 job - it tends to be 24/7 especially as we are not dealing with a large company here. Asking for finance at short notice then you should be available to answer relevant questions. ATM all we have to go on is the front page of a credit report which contains minimal information. I think bugs4me was a bit overzealous in shortening the quote from me, as it's made it look like his position is different from mine. The whole paragraph I wrote was... If Assetz doesn't wish to work at the weekend, and borrowers don't wish to be answering questions at the weekend, that's fine -- but in that case upcoming lending opportunities shouldn't be released to the website of Friday and bidding opened on Monday. That doesn't leave a reasonable time for Q&A, and could be seen as putting unnecessary pressure on lenders to bid before all the appropriate info is available, and that won't do Assetz's reputation any good at all. ... and that should make it clear that I believe that taking weekends off is acceptable only if the timescales allow proper evaluation during the week days. If "asking for finance at short notice" then weekend work is required. AC can have either finance at short notice or weekends off -- they can't have both if they want to keep their lenders happy.
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Post by chris on Dec 7, 2013 17:09:06 GMT
If Assetz doesn't wish to work at the weekend, and borrowers don't wish to be answering questions at the weekend, that's fine -- I would have thought that it's anything but fine. Running a business is not a 9-5 job - it tends to be 24/7 especially as we are not dealing with a large company here. Asking for finance at short notice then you should be available to answer relevant questions. ATM all we have to go on is the front page of a credit report which contains minimal information. In our defence the previews and preliminary credit reports are more than you get on many of our competitors websites and they don't give you the chance to ask questions before bidding starts. Being a smaller company (with less than 20 staff) also means that we're all incredibly busy and most are working 24/7. Compiling information to respond to a question can also take time especially when we need further input from a 3rd party, which isn't always possible over the weekend. All that said there are now answers to three of the questions on the site with more to follow.
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bugs4me
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Post by bugs4me on Dec 7, 2013 17:14:27 GMT
I would have thought that it's anything but fine. Running a business is not a 9-5 job - it tends to be 24/7 especially as we are not dealing with a large company here. Asking for finance at short notice then you should be available to answer relevant questions. ATM all we have to go on is the front page of a credit report which contains minimal information. In our defence the previews and preliminary credit reports are more than you get on many of our competitors websites and they don't give you the chance to ask questions before bidding starts. Being a smaller company (with less than 20 staff) also means that we're all incredibly busy and most are working 24/7. Compiling information to respond to a question can also take time especially when we need further input from a 3rd party, which isn't always possible over the weekend. All that said there are now answers to three of the questions on the site with more to follow. It wasn't meant to be personal Chris - I apologise if it came across that way. Also apologies to Mike for taking his post out of context.
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Post by chris on Dec 7, 2013 17:22:34 GMT
It wasn't meant to be personal Chris - I apologise if it came across that way. Also apologies to Mike for taking his post out of context. No worries, I'm just the computer geek anyway so technically not my department (in this instance) that's being criticised  I didn't take it personally, I just know how hard the rest of the team are working trying to bring quality loans to the platform that have had all the correct due diligence done on them including site visits, where some platforms are just churning through the loans doing little more than looking at a computerised report from a credit reference agency, and so I leapt to their defence. You are right to make demands of us though - the best way we can improve our service will be to listen to the suggestions made by our users. At the moment the Q&A system does operate a queue within our admin site and emails the RMs to let them know that there are questions pending, but there will no doubt be refinements that we can make to make sure that questions are answered promptly. I'll investigate these over the coming weeks with the rest of the team.
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mikes1531
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Post by mikes1531 on Dec 7, 2013 17:53:16 GMT
At the moment the Q&A system does operate a queue within our admin site and emails the RMs to let them know that there are questions pending, but there will no doubt be refinements that we can make to make sure that questions are answered promptly. I'll investigate these over the coming weeks with the rest of the team. I expect we all realise that answers don't appear magically, and research often is required. As a result, I think the first -- and easiest -- refinement/improvement that could be made would be to arrange for questions be posted as they are received, initially with a standard "We're working on it, and will post an answer here as soon as we have one" response. Yes, I accept they have to be confirmed as genuine, but I expect that anyone intelligent enough to be employed by AC could be entrusted to make that determination.
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Post by chris on Dec 7, 2013 17:57:25 GMT
I expect we all realise that answers don't appear magically, and research often is required. As a result, I think the first -- and easiest -- refinement/improvement that could be made would be to arrange for questions be posted as they are received, initially with a standard "We're working on it, and will post an answer here as soon as we have one" response. Yes, I accept they have to be confirmed as genuine, but I expect that anyone intelligent enough to be employed by AC could be entrusted to make that determination. I'm inclined to agree, especially as you need to be an ID checked user in order to ask a question which should help filter out the spammers. I'll suggest it to the other directors.
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mikes1531
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Post by mikes1531 on Dec 7, 2013 18:10:54 GMT
All that said there are now answers to three of the questions on the site with more to follow. More questions now have been posted, with 'holding' replies. Thank you. The answer to the "Is this loan for £200k or £210k?" question states that the credit report front page has been corrected. Unfortunately, only half the job was done. One mention of £200k has been corrected to £210k; the other is unchanged. Please try again.
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Post by mrclondon on Dec 8, 2013 12:33:30 GMT
The full credit report (complete with £200k typo) and several financial docs are now loaded on the website.
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Post by jevans4949 on Dec 8, 2013 17:44:55 GMT
So hopefully we can see our way to lending these people some money.
We shouldn't be too short-sighted.
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mikes1531
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Post by mikes1531 on Dec 8, 2013 23:48:16 GMT
The full credit report (complete with £200k typo) and several financial docs are now loaded on the website. Having read the report, I've asked two more questions... 1) The value of the personal guarantee lies in the owners' equity in their residence. Is there anything in the proposed loan agreement that would prevent them from increasing the size of the mortgage on their home and thus reducing their equity? 2) Page 9 of the Credit Report indicates that current debt of c£160k will be settled by the new loan, leaving c£40k as increased working capital. Inasmuch as the proposed loan is for £210k, how is the other £10k being used?
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mikes1531
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Post by mikes1531 on Dec 9, 2013 3:26:05 GMT
What I asked was... 4) The stated payments are more than enough to pay off a £210k loan over 10 years. I presume this means that while the rate to Assetz lenders is 11.5%, the rate being charged to the borrower is higher, with the difference being a loan monitoring fee payable to Assetz. Is this correct? If so, will the details of the fee and/or the rate to the borrower be disclosed in the final credit report? The answer posted to this question was... The rate payable by the borrower is 12.5% per annum, allowing for a monitoring fee to Assetz Capital of 1% per annum. This response answered the first part of my question, but it didn't address the final part. Having looked through the final credit report, I'm afraid the answer is no. I feel that in the interest of full disclosure and transparency, Assetz ought to make clear the existence of the Loan Monitoring fee and indicate its rate on every loan they organise. We lenders shouldn't have to calculate what the payment rate would be if there was no monitoring fee and compare it to the actual payments shown in order to try to work out what the monitoring fee might be. Do others agree? Or are you happy that this fee should remain hidden?
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bugs4me
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Post by bugs4me on Dec 9, 2013 8:19:14 GMT
What I asked was... 4) The stated payments are more than enough to pay off a £210k loan over 10 years. I presume this means that while the rate to Assetz lenders is 11.5%, the rate being charged to the borrower is higher, with the difference being a loan monitoring fee payable to Assetz. Is this correct? If so, will the details of the fee and/or the rate to the borrower be disclosed in the final credit report? The answer posted to this question was... The rate payable by the borrower is 12.5% per annum, allowing for a monitoring fee to Assetz Capital of 1% per annum. This response answered the first part of my question, but it didn't address the final part. Having looked through the final credit report, I'm afraid the answer is no. I feel that in the interest of full disclosure and transparency, Assetz ought to make clear the existence of the Loan Monitoring fee and indicate its rate on every loan they organise. We lenders shouldn't have to calculate what the payment rate would be if there was no monitoring fee and compare it to the actual payments shown in order to try to work out what the monitoring fee might be. Do others agree? Or are you happy that this fee should remain hidden? I don't have a problem with the fee being hidden or disclosed so I'm fairly neutral about this. It all depends on the return being offered (to myself). In this case though the AC slice is approx 8.5% which doesn't appear excessive. Where I do have a query has always been on directors personal guarantees. Assets which exist today can sometimes go wandering during the loan term so effectively the DG's end up being worthless if the worst comes to the worst. In this case, on the surface, the DG's appear limited so I may pass on this one especially as there doesn't appear to be a great deal of comfort regarding future trading projections.
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I didn't take it personally, I just know how hard the rest of the team are working trying to bring quality loans to the platform that have had all the correct due diligence done on them including site visits, where some platforms are just churning through the loans doing little more than looking at a computerised report from a credit reference agency, and so I leapt to their defence.
