blender
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Post by blender on Jul 2, 2021 13:31:09 GMT
I still predict a riot. Could we at least get a commitment to a period of notice (two months) before the hefty fee is applied? 0.5% would represent a decent annual return on money for some people currently. It is 0.25% or 42p on the average trade of £168, and yes, of course we will give a warning. The ASMX fee taken for each trade is 0.5%, not 0.25%. Both the buyer and seller will, at some point, be charged 42p on £168 trade.
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Post by Ace on Jul 2, 2021 13:39:13 GMT
The intention stated long ago was not a commitment. From the FAQ: 'Lenders Fees Account Fees – There are no fees associated with opening or maintaining an account with Ablrate. [weasel words exclude closing, or transferring your ISA out?] Loan Exchange Fees – There is a fee of 0.25% of the value of the trade for a seller and a buyer. At this time Ablrate absorbs that fee, so there is currently no charge for buying and selling on the Ablrate Loan Exchange. Loan Fees – all loan monitoring fees are paid by the borrower.'What troubles me about this is that there is no distinction explained between Ablrate and ASMX, which provides a secondary market for Ablrate under contract, and which charges the fee that is currently absorbed. What is 'Ablrate Loan Exchange'? Ablrate has no secondary market itself now - why not explain the contractual relationship with ASMX, not proud of it? More worryingly, does Ablrate make any guarantee about the continued availability of an SM? Liquidity is very important, at least to me, and without an SM I am out. 1. There are no fees for opening or maintaining an account. We pass on the charges we are charged when you transfer out. What would be the commercial sense in absorbing a fee for you to take your money elsewhere? We already pay £4k per month to our providers which we could pass on to IFISA holders, but we don't because that makes commercial sense, absorbing costs when money is leaving makes zero sense. ... To say that there is zero sense in absorbing these costs is factually incorrect. When deciding on where to place my ISA allowance I will definitely consider the cost of moving the funds elsewhere if it doesn't work out. The vast majority of IFISA providers have considered this issue and decided not to charge in the hope that doing so will attract more funds. I'm not clever enough to work out where the balance of paying the fees v missing out on extra investor funds lays, but to suggest that there is no commercial sense is nonsense. I do personally use ABLrate's IFISA, in fact it's my largest IFISA platform, just. However, I would have invested with them sooner if it wasn't for the exit fee.
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blender
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Post by blender on Jul 2, 2021 13:59:31 GMT
The intention stated long ago was not a commitment. From the FAQ: 'Lenders Fees Account Fees – There are no fees associated with opening or maintaining an account with Ablrate. [weasel words exclude closing, or transferring your ISA out?] Loan Exchange Fees – There is a fee of 0.25% of the value of the trade for a seller and a buyer. At this time Ablrate absorbs that fee, so there is currently no charge for buying and selling on the Ablrate Loan Exchange. Loan Fees – all loan monitoring fees are paid by the borrower.'What troubles me about this is that there is no distinction explained between Ablrate and ASMX, which provides a secondary market for Ablrate under contract, and which charges the fee that is currently absorbed. What is 'Ablrate Loan Exchange'? Ablrate has no secondary market itself now - why not explain the contractual relationship with ASMX, not proud of it? More worryingly, does Ablrate make any guarantee about the continued availability of an SM? Liquidity is very important, at least to me, and without an SM I am out. 1. There are no fees for opening or maintaining an account. We pass on the charges we are charged when you transfer out. What would be the commercial sense in absorbing a fee for you to take your money elsewhere? We already pay £4k per month to our providers which we could pass on to IFISA holders, but we don't because that makes commercial sense, absorbing costs when money is leaving makes zero sense. 2. Clause 8.9.3 onwards explains the relationship and we are very proud of it, having now traded £11.1 million and 90,000+ trades we are pretty chuffed that it is going rather well and when you see what is coming, you might not be so neg... 3. We have never made a guarantee about a continued Loan Exchange, guarantees only come with toasters these days, but if I was a betting man I would suggest that as we have been at the cutting edge of secondary market development for many years, there is a fair to middling chance of us providing a secondary market until the end of time (or until we are not allowed to). I will just say this. We have something coming that involves the ASMX tech but fundamentally changes how P2P is done, for the better. It is not really news, we have been telling people for years what our vision for the industry is and other platforms have now started to parrot similar things (as they go into another fund raising cycle). I suspect this will now set off some wild speculation and when we do announce there will be much gnashing of teeth etc, but we have been quietly working on something we feel solves many of the problems in the industry from the regulators point of view and that of lenders. Thank you for replying. My point is not the level of charges, but what seems to be a reduction in the level of openness and transparency which seem to be creeping in. Admitted that we are used to high standards from Ablrate, and not discussing the depths of FC here. This is your FAQ: 'These are the charges that can be made over the Ablrate platform to Lenders and Borrowers: Lenders FeesAccount Fees – There are no fees associated with opening or maintaining an account with Ablrate.Loan Exchange Fees – There is a fee of 0.25% of the value of the trade for a seller and a buyer. At this time Ablrate absorbs that fee, so there is currently no charge for buying and selling on the Ablrate Loan Exchange.Loan Fees – all loan monitoring fees are paid by the borrower.'The charges that can be made to lenders include exit fees - £1 for withdrawals under £5 and a fee for transferring out an ISA (however calculated). I suggest this statement is incomplete and misleading. It is reasonable to make a charge for transferring out an ISA. Last time I did so the charge from Ablrate was £100, irrespective of the size of transfer. So you say it has changed to costs, but where is that in the terms and conditions, or anywhere on the site that I as an existing ISA holder have access to? And how is the costs charged to Ablrate transparent? Charged by whom for what? Typically what? To charge unknown costs does not seem a very helpful approach. I have no plan to do it. The other problem is the terms and conditions, which do explain the ASMX relationship. However the need to read the T&Cs and do due diligence before investing has been relegated to small print in the footer, and the terms and conditions cannot be accessed from any trading page, only being linked on the general pages. They seem to be rather hidden from view, and we are not being told when they have been changed, as I think we should in order to be effective.
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Post by ablrate on Jul 2, 2021 15:21:24 GMT
1. There are no fees for opening or maintaining an account. We pass on the charges we are charged when you transfer out. What would be the commercial sense in absorbing a fee for you to take your money elsewhere? We already pay £4k per month to our providers which we could pass on to IFISA holders, but we don't because that makes commercial sense, absorbing costs when money is leaving makes zero sense. 2. Clause 8.9.3 onwards explains the relationship and we are very proud of it, having now traded £11.1 million and 90,000+ trades we are pretty chuffed that it is going rather well and when you see what is coming, you might not be so neg... 3. We have never made a guarantee about a continued Loan Exchange, guarantees only come with toasters these days, but if I was a betting man I would suggest that as we have been at the cutting edge of secondary market development for many years, there is a fair to middling chance of us providing a secondary market until the end of time (or until we are not allowed to). I will just say this. We have something coming that involves the ASMX tech but fundamentally changes how P2P is done, for the better. It is not really news, we have been telling people for years what our vision for the industry is and other platforms have now started to parrot similar things (as they go into another fund raising cycle). I suspect this will now set off some wild speculation and when we do announce there will be much gnashing of teeth etc, but we have been quietly working on something we feel solves many of the problems in the industry from the regulators point of view and that of lenders. Thank you for replying. My point is not the level of charges, but what seems to be a reduction in the level of openness and transparency which seem to be creeping in. Admitted that we are used to high standards from Ablrate, and not discussing the depths of FC here. This is your FAQ: 'These are the charges that can be made over the Ablrate platform to Lenders and Borrowers: Lenders FeesAccount Fees – There are no fees associated with opening or maintaining an account with Ablrate.Loan Exchange Fees – There is a fee of 0.25% of the value of the trade for a seller and a buyer. At this time Ablrate absorbs that fee, so there is currently no charge for buying and selling on the Ablrate Loan Exchange.Loan Fees – all loan monitoring fees are paid by the borrower.'The charges that can be made to lenders include exit fees - £1 for withdrawals under £5 and a fee for transferring out an ISA (however calculated). I suggest this statement is incomplete and misleading. It is reasonable to make a charge for transferring out an ISA. Last time I did so the charge from Ablrate was £100, irrespective of the size of transfer. So you say it has changed to costs, but where is that in the terms and conditions, or anywhere on the site that I as an existing ISA holder have access to? And how is the costs charged to Ablrate transparent? Charged by whom for what? Typically what? To charge unknown costs does not seem a very helpful approach. I have no plan to do it. The other problem is the terms and conditions, which do explain the ASMX relationship. However the need to read the T&Cs and do due diligence before investing has been relegated to small print in the footer, and the terms and conditions cannot be accessed from any trading page, only being linked on the general pages. They seem to be rather hidden from view, and we are not being told when they have been changed, as I think we should in order to be effective. We have updated the terms and the FAQs reference charges mentioned above on on the IFISA FAQ. The T&C's for the IFSA have to be agreed before you open an IFISA and are comprehensive. T&C's are front and center when you check the boxes when making a primary market loan, along with extra risk warnings, we will add a link in the footer in a sec. We couldn't be more upfront about the risks and terms if we tried. Risks are in every borrowing proposal, general and specific, each borrowing proposal has attached terms and conditions of the loan, with our fees front and center, we API in credit data (for free) and the FAQ's are on every page and they are massive... by design. Short of popping around Chez Blender and personally pointing to every instance of disclosure I am not sure how more transparent we can be? Ref the charges for Ablrate we are charge 0.35% /12 each month of the money in the IFSA (now put in an FAQ) and £4,000 per annum, around £40k presently. It would be around £4 per month per £1,000 for your IFSA if we passed that on. Plus transfer -in fees, transfer out fees, admin fees on any other admin that is required.
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Post by westcountry on Jul 2, 2021 18:12:35 GMT
I still predict a riot. Could we at least get a commitment to a period of notice (two months) before the hefty fee is applied? 0.5% would represent a decent annual return on money for some people currently. It is 0.25% or 42p on the average trade of £168, and yes, of course we will give a warning. ablrate, please could you give a warning of the at least a month in advance of its introduction - if not longer? I trade a lot on the secondary market, so bringing in a 0.25% fee for both buying & selling will have a large impact on how I use ABLRate.
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blender
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Post by blender on Jul 3, 2021 22:13:22 GMT
We have updated the terms and the FAQs reference charges mentioned above on on the IFISA FAQ. The T&C's for the IFSA have to be agreed before you open an IFISA and are comprehensive. T&C's are front and center when you check the boxes when making a primary market loan, along with extra risk warnings, we will add a link in the footer in a sec. We couldn't be more upfront about the risks and terms if we tried. Risks are in every borrowing proposal, general and specific, each borrowing proposal has attached terms and conditions of the loan, with our fees front and center, we API in credit data (for free) and the FAQ's are on every page and they are massive... by design. Short of popping around Chez Blender and personally pointing to every instance of disclosure I am not sure how more transparent we can be? Ref the charges for Ablrate we are charge 0.35% /12 each month of the money in the IFSA (now put in an FAQ) and £4,000 per annum, around £40k presently. It would be around £4 per month per £1,000 for your IFSA if we passed that on. Plus transfer -in fees, transfer out fees, admin fees on any other admin that is required. Thank you for the reply, and the changes to the FAQ on ISA fees and other planned changes. The Goji charges for running the ISA facility are general ISA overheads and not related to making a transfer out. But the point is taken that absorbing £40k pa on an ISA total of about £10M (by my calculation) is steep and might explain the £100 transfer out fee. No house calls please. I keep my address secret.
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blender
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Post by blender on Jul 3, 2021 22:56:34 GMT
It is 0.25% or 42p on the average trade of £168, and yes, of course we will give a warning. ablrate , please could you give a warning of the at least a month in advance of its introduction - if not longer? I trade a lot on the secondary market, so bringing in a 0.25% fee for both buying & selling will have a large impact on how I use ABLRate. If you transfer between two accounts, at market rate, you would get hit with 0.5% total per trade.
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Post by westcountry on Jul 4, 2021 13:10:06 GMT
ablrate , please could you give a warning of the at least a month in advance of its introduction - if not longer? I trade a lot on the secondary market, so bringing in a 0.25% fee for both buying & selling will have a large impact on how I use ABLRate. If you transfer between two accounts, at market rate, you would get hit with 0.5% total per trade. Quite right, this will be a problem when it comes to putting new tax year's money in an ISA & buying loans from my non-ISA account - for the full £20k ISA allowance it will cost you £100 ablrate, did you incur these 0.25% fees (for both buying & selling) when you ran your own Loan Exchange on ablrate.com, or have you only started incurring the fees since the loan exchange was moved to ASMX, please?
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Post by ablrate on Jul 5, 2021 8:29:40 GMT
If you transfer between two accounts, at market rate, you would get hit with 0.5% total per trade. Quite right, this will be a problem when it comes to putting new tax year's money in an ISA & buying loans from my non-ISA account - for the full £20k ISA allowance it will cost you £100 ablrate , did you incur these 0.25% fees (for both buying & selling) when you ran your own Loan Exchange on ablrate.com, or have you only started incurring the fees since the loan exchange was moved to ASMX, please? I think it would be easy enough to stop/rebate fees between accounts. No, we didn't charge ourselves fees. However, ASMX is a third party, albeit a friendly one, and there are fees involved to Ablrate.
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Post by Badly Drawn Stickman on Jul 5, 2021 8:49:40 GMT
Quite right, this will be a problem when it comes to putting new tax year's money in an ISA & buying loans from my non-ISA account - for the full £20k ISA allowance it will cost you £100 ablrate , did you incur these 0.25% fees (for both buying & selling) when you ran your own Loan Exchange on ablrate.com, or have you only started incurring the fees since the loan exchange was moved to ASMX, please? I think it would be easy enough to stop/rebate fees between accounts. No, we didn't charge ourselves fees. However, ASMX is a third party, albeit a friendly one, and there are fees involved to Ablrate. Far simpler to do the decent thing and not charge ablrate 'in house trades' at all. Currently you are looking to have your cake and eat ours. Your failure to see that is at best concerning.
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blender
Member of DD Central
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Post by blender on Jul 5, 2021 9:59:26 GMT
I think that the issue is seen because the charges are currently absorbed, to be fair, and we are discussing the future possibilities. If ASMX is a separate enterprise, albeit with the same CEO, and it gains its revenue from transaction charges, then it cannot really favour its own friends by not charging. I think it is right that ASMX charges Ablrate to the stated scale of fees and Ablrate decides what to pass on. Same customer, different account, is an Ablrate issue, not ASMX.
It is interesting to think of the possible negotiations between the two companies. I remember an old spoof civil-service type personal appraisal and the five point scale of performance, which for communications ability went something like: A. Talks with God B. Talks with kings. C. Talks to himself. D. Argues with himself. E. Loses those arguments.
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Post by westcountry on Jul 5, 2021 10:06:32 GMT
Quite right, this will be a problem when it comes to putting new tax year's money in an ISA & buying loans from my non-ISA account - for the full £20k ISA allowance it will cost you £100 ablrate , did you incur these 0.25% fees (for both buying & selling) when you ran your own Loan Exchange on ablrate.com, or have you only started incurring the fees since the loan exchange was moved to ASMX, please? I think it would be easy enough to stop/rebate fees between accounts. No, we didn't charge ourselves fees. However, ASMX is a third party, albeit a friendly one, and there are fees involved to Ablrate. Thank you for your reply, ablrate . When ASMX was introduced, it was explained to lenders as being a much better loan exchange than the Loan Exchange on ablrate.com was. If using ASMX involves a 0.25% fee on each purchase & sale (0.5% per transaction), then I would FAR prefer having the old Loan Exchange on ablrate.com, with all its faults and foibles, rather than using ASMX. I doubt I would be the only lender to feel this way - perhaps someone with more forum know-how could set up a poll on this?
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Post by westcountry on Jul 5, 2021 10:10:37 GMT
I think that the issue is seen because the charges are currently absorbed, to be fair, and we are discussing the future possibilities. If ASMX is a separate enterprise, albeit with the same CEO, and it gains its revenue from transaction charges, then it cannot really favour its own friends by not charging. I think it is right that ASMX charges Ablrate to the stated scale of fees and Ablrate decides what to pass on. Same customer, different account, is an Ablrate issue, not ASMX. It is interesting to think of the possible negotiations between the two companies. I remember an old spoof civil-service type personal appraisal and the five point scale of performance, which for communications ability went something like: A. Talks with God B. Talks with kings. C. Talks to himself. D. Argues with himself. E. Loses those arguments. My concern on this, is that as ASMX has the same CEO as ABLRate, how separate is it, really? And does that shared CEO affect ABLRate's decision to move its SM to ASMX, with its 0.5% charges per transaction, rather than develop its own SM on ablrate.com - which didn't incur any transaction charges?
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Post by westcountry on Jul 5, 2021 10:18:05 GMT
I think it would be easy enough to stop/rebate fees between accounts. No, we didn't charge ourselves fees. However, ASMX is a third party, albeit a friendly one, and there are fees involved to Ablrate. Far simpler to do the decent thing and not charge ablrate 'in house trades' at all. Currently you are looking to have your cake and eat ours. Your failure to see that is at best concerning. Quite right - I'm starting to wonder if ABLRate shifting its secondary market to ASMX, was 1) to provide a closely connected company (ASMX) with an initial customer, and 2) by outsourcing the SM, allow ABLRate lenders to be charged an extra fee for using it. Or am I just too suspicious?
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Post by Badly Drawn Stickman on Jul 5, 2021 11:03:07 GMT
Far simpler to do the decent thing and not charge ablrate 'in house trades' at all. Currently you are looking to have your cake and eat ours. Your failure to see that is at best concerning. Quite right - I'm starting to wonder if ABLRate shifting its secondary market to ASMX, was 1) to provide a closely connected company (ASMX) with an initial customer, and 2) by outsourcing the SM, allow ABLRate lenders to be charged an extra fee for using it. Or am I just too suspicious? I think it was fairly obvious from the outset we were initially test pilots and later a marketing tool I have no real problem with that. Where my problem lies is fairly obvious by now I suspect. The goalposts and positioning may belong to Ablrate but at the end of the day the balls are ours and taking them home is always an option. Switching to tennis that particular ball is currently in their court...
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