Access account loss expectations

We have no idea is the honest answer. 

We have no idea of how much property prices in general will be impacted by this crisis.
We have no idea of how the loanbook development projects in particular will impacted.
We have no idea of when Assetz will change around the queueing mechanism, rebalance supply and demand (or not), or change something else that materially alters matters for everyone.

Multiply those all together, and you end up with an answer that could quite conceivably be the square root of 'no idea'. 

Also, you say loss when you could quite conceivably come away with a profit (despite what you read around here).

So, given the above, somewhere between a gain of about 10% and a loss of about 80% over the next few years is about as far as my crystal ball goes. Hopefully more to the former than the latter.

Why do you ask?

I would ask the Accountants their views- probably as accurate as any guesses we can come up with, and I assume you are paying them for their professional expertise.

If you want a guess from the rest of us, I am praying for no loss, I am expecting a small loss, and I am fearing a large loss, but quite frankly I have no blinking idea- I am more confident in predicting the 3:40 race at Musselburgh (without knowing when horse racing returns) than I have guessing when/how/what markets and economies return to anything like normal conditions. 

It is a time for patience, calmness, and keeping a sense of perspective, there are much worse things going on than losing a chunk of money on a P2P investment in this world.

I sold out of the access accounts earlier in the year as I thought the risk was increasing.

There is no easy answer to your question.

In many ways you can do exactly what the manual account holders would do.

Everyone will have an opinion on this forum...

Some may say you should be OK and there will be no capital losses, just a cut in interest rates, others will be more pessimistic.

I suggest simply go through all the loans in your access account and make a judgement call on any loans you think may result in a loss. That is what I used to do, concentrating on large loans and those that looked like trouble e.g. defaulted loans.

I can't say my reviews were perfect but it served a purpose in terms of knowing whether to stop investing and at least a gut feel on expected losses.

Any expected losses can be compared with the money in the Provision Fund. That is what I did and one of the reasons I left the access accounts earlier this year.

I think you would need to repeat the review regularly as more information about loans becomes available.

The risk of capital loss will change over time. Personally I think the risk will increase as good loans are paid off, more difficult loans remain and the accounts become poorly diversified. Am surprised that not all lenders have entered the queue to withdraw their money just in case, they can always choose to reinvest later. Clearly I am in the minority though in my thinking.

Another thing to look at is the trend in the provision fund stats that AC update every quarter. This gives a snap shot of what AC think. It is far from ideal since it is only updated once a quarter, delayed by circa 2 months, and is ACs judgement call which may be too optimistic. And any trend may not represent future performance...

You will get some idea of what people think of the loan book when the new functionality to sell all your holdings is launched. The discount that needs to be given to sell the holding is a proxy you could give your accountant if you don't have a better judgement call.

Am not sure why your accountant needs the info, this may have a bearing on the information you give them.

Clearly the worst case scenario is the collapse and wind down of AC. Personally I think this is unlikely but there is no doubt the risk has increased. In this case clearly losses would be higher.

Sorry,  but the pedant in me has to point out that it's more like 'no idea' cubed 

I have the same issue. Most of my money in AC is invested via a limited company account. I assume I can mitigate my corporation tax bill by telling my accountant to provide for loss. Need to discuss it with my accountant but I was going to suggest at least a 20% haircut using my highly accurate 'roll a dice' assessment methodology. I sincerely hope this is pessimistic, but might be a good way of deferring my corporation tax bill. Might even save some money when corporation tax is cut later in the year by the government trying to 'defibrilate' the economy back to life. 

If you're likely to put your access accounts up for sale on the secondary markets at 90% discount, I think it'll sell in seconds

I'm new here and would more than likely make a complete hash of that!! Possibly someone else could.....?