Update: investment release requests - RS weekly email

I personally don't find it misleading. If you look back at some of their previous emails, they said "your investment continues to earn". Investment summary page also says "Your money in the queue is still on loan and continues to accrue interest. You may cancel a request while it is queuing.". You can always write to them.

Forgive me for playing middle for diddle, I agree in some measure with both comments on this subject. A bit like the Curate's Egg, good in parts.

Where I take issue with RS, is the way they changed the short-term rolling market to Access.

Notwithstanding, it was a brilliant sleight-of-hand marketing slogan, how many RS supporters on here gained the “subliminal” auto suggestive impression that the term Access was akin to that of “Instant Access” as in a savings Building Society account?

That question isn’t addressed to street-wise savvy hard bitten experienced investors, just your average Jack and Jill first time investor.

I’ve answered my own question Jennifer, I’ve laboriously ploughed through past bulletins back to 2018 from RateSetter on the subject of the switch from the monthly rolling market to Access to the point where new investors’ money is frequently tied into 5-year contracts.


As you know, the queue for withdrawal requests for those who kept the faith but have decided 1.5% is not worth putting capital at risk, is now circa 20,000. The decision to delay withdrawal requests and the loyalty shown by some investors in order to support the liquidity of RS, has not been rewarded. In fact, buried in concrete Mafia style and dumped in the Thames would not be an unreasonable analogy.


I consider myself to be of average intellect, I’ve concluded that the switch from the rolling monthly market to the inaptly named Access was most certainly not in my interests and little more than masterfully phrased nuanced twaddle in support of RS’s own wellbeing.


I congratulate the articulacy of the RS public relations dept, or whomsoever scripts their bulletins. The English language is deservedly the international language of choice for business, RS’s composition and use of the same, is nothing short of financial poetry.


I feel I should add, that however unlikely, nothing would please me more than for RS to change the course of history and redeem their reputation for playing with a straight bat.

I expect there are a number of reasons.

The type of loan and borrower on the 5 year market may be typically quite different to the access accounts. I doubt there are many property or other secured loans on the 5 year markets for example. There will be an awful lot of lenders who used the access accounts like easy access savings accounts and hence the withdrawal requests on the access accounts may be higher even in normal conditions. There may be more people happy with a 50% rate cut on the 5 year with its higher average rate, albeit a few lenders have high rates on the access accounts. The fee on the 5 year market may put off some lenders selling, they may simply wait for their loans to mature. I expect there are very little tranche drawdowns or new loans in the 5 year market...

It may well be a combination of more borrower repayments, less new loans and drawdowns and less lender withdraws.

Also RS were already trying to get rid of the 'old' markets (not open to new investors etc) so people selling out of these markets suits RS. I don't know what RS is going to do in the medium term say over the next year or so, if they intend to continue lending, but in gradual run off mode, they may want the 'new' accounts to carry on working and discouraging withdrawals keeps them functioning. It's even possible that the RS retail arm may be allowed to continue indefinitely as a separate operation.

The average lender rate on new loans across all markets is 3.7% in 2020 so far.

With the market rate at 4.3% in the 5 year there won't be a great deal of new lending on the 5 year market and there may not be many if any circa 5 year new loans now anyway.

67% of new lending in the last 3 months was property, I doubt any of these are 5 year loans, Property loans are typically 12 to 24 months on RS according to their website.

27% of new lending was "other" which includes giffgaff, looking at the giff gaff site their loans are typically 24 months so may never go on the 5 year market.

Of course some new loans on the 5 year are less than 5 years but not many in my experience.

they closed the 3 year, then the 1 year (then brought that back for some), 5 year would be next in normal conditions allowing A/P/M to be a single source of funds to use for all lending meaning they could compress rates (profits), lend without managing multiple markets (liquidity) be able to predict funding capacity (repayments and investment settings).  they were on the cusp of profitability and this is certainly linked to this approach. It would not really be the old model but a model that beat savings, inflation and was a more stable bet for the cautious investment portfolio among us. Thus far - it has proven true. However, now it is just about managing a situation well until Metro do what they need to do. 

Operationally no one would want to be linked to a malpractice firm (CV...) so i can see staff pushing to make it work as best they can and frankly I think they are doing well. Circa 90 million released (largely from the closing markets) and fulfilling lending obligations is a real challenge and they have done well. I just hope they respect investors during the run down of the retail book when metro finally get stuck in.