What's the reason for the drought?

Don't see any need for an artificial delay like this - but it could be useful to have some kind of banner (similar to the "investment paused" banner) indicating how close to drawdown a loan within the "coming soon" section is - whether that's expressed in terms of time (e.g. "drawdown within 1 week", "drawdown expected today") or in terms of the main key milestones (e.g. "underwriter funds called", "drawdown payment authorised").

For those who want alerts, they could be linked to those key milestones.

It must be a record that one p2p site emailed me two minutes after I did an internet bank transfer to say the money had arrived.   Sorry for off topic.

I suppose it depends on how you define underwriting/underwriters, but if you take the position that an underwriter wants to exit from a deal as reasonably promptly as the Aftermarket can take their loan parts off their hands, then I'd say Leeds probably has no underwriters' money still tied up since it has had no significant amount of parts available on the Aftermarket for quite some time.  And that doesn't surprise me in the least considering the loan offers 13% interest, drew down over a year ago, and has an exemplary repayment history.  This doesn't mean, of course, that there can't be some investors in this loan who have underwriting privileges who have chosen to retain a holding in this loan, but I wouldn't call that an underwriter position.  Besides, if that underwriter wished to underwrite other loans, they probably could count on being able to extract a significant amount of funds from their Leeds position pretty quickly.  Considering how rarely there are surplus parts on the Aftermarket, I'd guess there is considerable unsatisfied demand for Leeds parts.  But that's JMHO, of course.

And thinking a bit more about the question of whether settlement of the large overdue bridging loans would increase underwriting capacity, I have now concluded that it would, albeit indirectly.  Even if there is no underwriter money actually tied up in those loans, settlement of those loans would put £6M of funds back into retail lenders' accounts.  I expect that a large chunk of that would be redeployed into loans now available on the Aftermarket and most of that redeployment would be into parts now held by underwriters, so that indeed ought to create more underwriting capacity.

That's my kind of January sale, much better than getting trampled to death for the latest toaster!!

How is the secondary market for toasters ?

I have experienced a lot of frustration with loans taking forever to draw down (or failing to materialise) leaving funds inactive for several months but this problem is going to disappear. I would like to see a broader spread of type and size of loan as well as an increase in supply of new loans but I am sure Assetz want this too.
The fact remains that I can now invest pence instantly and without cost, in investments of my choosing, within the Assetz Market Place (subject to availability). I can also access my money very easily in most cases and I suspect there is work going on in the background at Govt. level to make the transfer of funds faster. 

The minimum investment requirements on some other similar platforms mean that they are not available to me even though they sound interesting.The poor communication levels of some platforms is also a deterrent.
The trading costs of micro investments on the stock markets are eye-wateringly high when compared to standard trading costs, making it impossible to take advantage of market gains and losses in the same way that large investors can. Being a Business Angel also requires large sums of money, if you look beyond buying a share in the village shop, even though most people know a business they would be prepared to support if the opportunity arose.

There has been a huge increase in internet enabled innovation in the last ten years, whether it's the P2P providers or the small Electricity/gas suppliers that are showing the big boys the door. It sometimes seems that the more these folk do, the more is expected of them, and that a fix today/tomorrow is no longer good enough - it has to be yesterday!

They all deserve a pat on the back and a very happy Christmas.