Green Energy Investment Account is live

It looks like they have a process that runs periodically to take back the PF premium, which potentially makes it worse from a Tax point of view and also makes it potentially very difficult to track and match interest payments and PF premiums.

Out of interest (since I haven't invested and don't intend to) can you, as the proposal states, set the GEIA to withdraw interest and repayments like the MLIA, if so has anyone tried it and what is the effect on the PF premiums particularly if they are being taken hours after the interest payments come in?

Yes they did loose many a lender/investor and I went into run-off mode with them towards the latter part of 13. Still at that stage. Once I cease to understand how a platform works, or maybe, when the platform refuses (for whatever reason) to explain how it works, then I'm out. In the case of Z, it will take a while for my investments to totally run-off but I have no intention of jumping back in. It's of little use to myself that's it's all controlled by an algorithm that no one can fathom out.

It wasn't just Z that was trying to work things out. So was the community forum and my goodness IMO we went round and round in circles. A total waste of time. It surprised me that Z did not get more involved in the discussions but coincidentally IIRC it was also at the time that institutional funds arrived although I stand to be corrected on those thoughts.

Z is really now for the passive investor. Us active folks are an irritant to them.

Now back to topic about this Green Monster (sorry Rose, you've got me calling it that now), I mean GEIA........

Inasmuch as the GEIA only became available ten days ago, I don't see how any payments being made today could be taking account of prior rounded payments -- because there wouldn't have been any prior payments, rounded or otherwise.

And if 3.56p was rounded to 2p, then AC are using a very different definition of rounding than I've ever come across before.  chris:  Is this the way you were expecting the system to behave?

I looked at the GEIA and concluded that the cost -- being the spread between 9.5-10% and 7% -- is much greater than coverage by the PF is worth to me, so I will not be putting any significant sums in it.  But I have to admit that I'm somewhat obsessed by understanding how things work, and particularly so when my investments are involved.  Because of that, I've made a small investment in the GEIA so I could see first-hand how it works.  The answer to jonno's question, therefore, is that in my case it's just curiosity.

I can confirm that the option does seem to exist for the GEIA exactly as it does for the MLIA.  I haven't tried setting it to withdraw.  Even if I had, I'm afraid it wouldn't be much of a test because my account is so small I'd expect the repayments to round to 0p for some time to come -- especially if the rounding is handled as others have observed.  However, using an example of a £120 holding in a WT loan paying 9.5%, what I'd expect to happen if interest was set to be withdrawn is...

• Every month a payment of 95p would be received.
• With the withdrawal option set, that 95p would be credited to the lender's Cash Account. 
• If the system is smart enough to try to take the 25p destined for the PF out of the Cash account as well, then there shouldn't be a problem.  Unless, of course, the lender was very quick -- or the system was very slow, as observed today -- and withdrew all their available funds before the PF debit was attempted.
• If the system isn't that smart and tries to take the 25p out of the GEIA, then it would get interesting.  Either the withdrawal would be refused -- as currently happens if a lender tries to withdraw more from their MLIA than they have available cash -- or the system will do what it originally was set up to do in the MLIA until people complained, which is to sell some GEIA holding to raise the required 25p.  Unless the GEIA just happens to contain some parts of loans not currently available on the Aftermarket -- those probably would sell reasonably quickly -- it could take some time before any loan parts actually sold.  And how would the parts to be sold be selected?
  

Today, the GEIA bought 5p of Bu WT for me.  So now I have 28p uninvested. 

I haven't a clue why only 5p was bought.  I can't wait to see what happens next!

Apologies not needed; I like to coin a phrase 

chris:  I'm baffled.  This evening I noticed that a small amount of Corn**** WT became available on the Aftermarket.  My GEIA seems to contain 54p of that loan, so that's 2.7% of my £20 account.  I would have expected that the algorithm would recognise that I'm severely underweighted in that WT loan and use my available 28p to try to balance my investment.  Instead, it has done absolutely nothing! 

Is that the way you would expect it to work?  Is the algorithm set to leave a certain amount of cash in the account idle?

You have probably hit the nail on the head with your last statement, given that the PF Premium collection routine appears to run several hours after interest and capital payments are received, the investment algorithm is probably set to leave a cash reserve in order to ensure that there is cash available to settle the fee when it is collected.  

As I was drifting off to sleep last night I was pondering how the external PR agency which AC has retained for this launch might present the story boards for a tv ad ... how about something like this ?


The action takes place against the back drop of a wind farm, and includes a cast of cute little animated piggy banks and large animated green monsters that bear a passing resemblance to computers.

The large green monsters are seen throwing the piggy banks at the turbine blades. To the sound of piggy type squeals the piggy banks smash open cascading a shrapnel of coins to the ground.

The big green monsters then shovel the coins into 3 wheelbarrows, each of which has a curious set of initials on the side followed by a percentage - CAP, INT, and PF. The green monsters know that the coins should be split between the wheelbarrows according to the percentages but nobody's told them how, they are seen pointing at the percentages scratching their heads, then grunt and shrug their shoulders. And what's this ? A grotesque purple monster with multiple limbs has arrived and grabbed a generous bucketful of coins out of the PF wheelbarrow and is seen wandering off looking smug.


Given this ad is bound to be a success, there will be no need for a customer focus group before screening, and a prequel ad can be commissioned immediately for screening a couple of weeks later. I read recently the wonga "Wongies" puppets have been made redundant. They could be hired on the cheap and shown handing their redundancy money to the green monsters who make a dumb show of posting them at random into 5 piggy banks each marked with 20% on the side, but are left with a pile of coins they don't know what to do with. Then cut to an edited highlights version of the first ad, ending with the smug purple monster.