Great idea. Disgraceful execution

Please don't make me. I'm too old to learn new platforms.

Sorry, no advice intended. Just trying to compare notes with other P2P investors.
When I mention baskets and eggs I refer to broader diversification (i.e. equities, bonds, cash, real estate, other alternative asset classes). For P2P I tend to think that platform diversification is fairly irrelevant. If one fails, liquidity will probably dry across the board.
Assuming P2P is one [new] asset class, I personally would not allocate more than one fifth of my investable funds into it. I still find myself more comfortable with equities for the medium/long term. But this is just a personal opinion.

So what did happen to lenders when the failed? These are case studies.

As a sort of goodbye to FC act, I wanted to bring back to life my first post and thread in this forum.

My initial opinion proved to be quite accurate. I stand by it.

For the last 6 months I have been the proud owner of a zombie account. I could not take the rest of my money out because part of the funds were "RBR" and part were just defaulted.

FC has been dismal in defending the rights of lenders.

So called IVAs and CVAs see the companies still trading while lenders recovering pennies on the pound.

Comments stating "we are in the process of contacting borrowers/guarantors" that go for weeks on end. Weeks to make a fricking phone call.



FC has been an absolute disappointment I am happy to be out for good.

I too took the heavy-hearted decision 10 days ago finally to call time on any further direct FC lending, retaining only my ISA holding of FCIF investment trust (yielding a tax-free 7%-8% at zero effort).

From a high-water mark well into 6 figures in summer 2015, my FC book was already down circa 90% as I was left chasing Ds and Es to hold short-term. However, with no bot to call upon (and FC lifting not a finger to prevent their PM domination), I can no longer bag enough new loans to replace those I must sell and so cannot maintain adequate diversification. I'm currently selling all remaining live loans before their next payment (at par where necessary) to avoid the potential annoyance of any further defaults.

Final scores on the doors (before any future recoveries) will be approx £16k net profit over 2 years at an IRR of around 14% (Oh, for the old days of early-closers and property cashbacks!). Not bad, but it could have been so much better had FC retained variable rate auctions and/or restricted the bot abuse.

The beneficiaries of FC's decline have been MoneyThing, Ablrate, Funding Secure and BridgeCrowd in that order (my Saving Stream book remains broadly static, whilst my Assetz Capital book is circa 50% down, again for the lack of new loans worth buying). Once my last FC loan is gone, my only remaining unsecured lending (FCIF excepted) will be the handful of Lending Crowd loans I'm still stuck with...

I'm finally off too, despite having a bot. I had it because the promised API never appeared (after I had geared up for it), and I've spent the last 3 years or so hoping FC would finally fix the issues (or at least limit buying enough so that an autobid on Es would garner a few parts each week).

The recent SM changes seem to have stopped some of the bot activity there (I think FC have introduced some "HTTP only" validation cookies, which means if you want to hack/automate selling and buying you need to intercept & go play with their own javascript code - you can't interact directly with their Ajax servers any more) .. but it has not been applied to PM bidding (maybe arriving later?). I too was up at 5 figures (6 if you roll in my partner's account), and am shrinking it fast, and I'm off to all the same places as everyone else.

I'll probably keep the bot rolling for a bit, just to keep the stats going, but it'll only buy Es at 25%+ (and sell them for +0.3% ASAP).