Ace
Member of DD Central
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Post by Ace on Jun 16, 2022 12:39:25 GMT
Still no fix to the issue of late payment of retained interest. Today's slew of payments included some that were 2 months overdue, despite being retained by CP. Tagging CrowdProperty Representative , no doubt futilely.
I don't have a strong opinion about the administration at CP, I make sure they have paid the correct interest at loan completion. If you don't trust the 'expected interest' in the pledges spreadsheet that means checking the transactions spreadsheet - very easy.
I'm not sure why CP perservere with these different interest regimes as they don't have the staff, which is why they don't publish valuation and legal documents like Proplend. I actually prefer this compared to places like Assetzcapital which is about job creation to fuel more revenue and expenses, end result the same or worse, they hired another managing director this week.
I find that checking that the correct interest has been paid is near impossible on CP. Is hard to know what date the borrower actually repaid on (see here), so I don't know how many days interest should be charged. When a loan has repaid in multiple tranches this problem is magnified many times. The dates that partial capital repayments are made seems to be unspecified. The dates recorded in the downloadable spreadsheet often don't agree with those in the Pledge Transaction table. Sometimes a single capital repayment by the borrower is paid and recorded in the spreadsheet across 2 different dates (a different date for manual and auto pledges, or for standard and ISA accounts). The number of possible combinations of actual repayment dates escalates rapidly. When you add to this the possibility of multiple capital repayment dates during a penalty period, the task becomes well beyond my abilities. To be clear, I don't regularly attempt to calculate that interest has been correctly calculated. I trust CP to get the calculation "about" right. If I didn't I would stop lending. I feel that I should also make it clear that I am in fact a big fan of CP, both as a lender and as a very minor equity investor. I'm not trying to dissuade potential investors from using them, quite the opposite, but I think it's important that forums like this highlight any potential shortcomings to allow them to be fully informed. I've introduced many tens of people to the platform, and am still doing so. They've been my second largest platform for a long time now. If I could magically reallocate my funds across all platforms right now CP would likely be my largest platform. I'd rate CP as probably the second safest platform in the industry after Loanpad. I'm aware that the tardy payment of retained interest won't make a massive difference to our overall returns, but for me it's disrespectful to lenders not to pay it promptly. I get that they have what they consider to be higher priorities, but they've known about this issue for at least 6 months (and probably years). If they don't have sufficient staff to be able to pay retained interest until 2 months after it is due then they simply don't have sufficient staff. Why the systems haven't been updated to automatically pay retained interest on the due dates Is beyond me. Had they done so 6 months ago they would have saved staff hours by now. There are many issues on CP that need addressing, but the late payment of retained interest is the one that irks me most. I get that from a business viewpoint they currently have an oversupply of lenders, and therefore wish to prioritise the borrower side. I don't expect the issues to be fixed overnight, but I do expect them to be fixed in a reasonable time, which I think they have failed to do. Just look at the massive leap forward that Kuflink have made in regard to allowing easy access to project updates, while CP's unusable system has remained unmodified across several years.
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cb25
Posts: 3,512 
Likes: 2,655
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Post by cb25 on Jun 16, 2022 13:27:40 GMT
The thing that irritates me most is that CP can display incorrect balances (see portfolio drop thread), a problem reported since at least Dec 2021 and yet still say "We do not currently have a timeframe for this, but we are working hard to ensure this will show on user accounts as soon as possible." (entry 7 June 2022 in the linked thread). In a moment of frustration last week (after it happened to my CP a/c) I rang the FCA to ask if incorrect balances being displayed by an FCA regulated firm was something they were interested in. No, they're not, at least when it's reported by an individual consumer. They suggested I might want to contact the Financial Ombudsman and if the FO thought a regulation had been breached, the FO might mention it to the FCA. Given the timescales involved in an FO complaint, that seems a waste of time. Odd state of affairs imo that a financial organization can simply dismiss the idea that balances should always be correct and state they have no date by which it'll be fixed.
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Post by overthehill on Jun 16, 2022 14:18:31 GMT
I don't have a strong opinion about the administration at CP, I make sure they have paid the correct interest at loan completion. If you don't trust the 'expected interest' in the pledges spreadsheet that means checking the transactions spreadsheet - very easy.
I'm not sure why CP perservere with these different interest regimes as they don't have the staff, which is why they don't publish valuation and legal documents like Proplend. I actually prefer this compared to places like Assetzcapital which is about job creation to fuel more revenue and expenses, end result the same or worse, they hired another managing director this week.
I find that checking that the correct interest has been paid is near impossible on CP. Is hard to know what date the borrower actually repaid on (see here), so I don't know how many days interest should be charged. When a loan has repaid in multiple tranches this problem is magnified many times. The dates that partial capital repayments are made seems to be unspecified. The dates recorded in the downloadable spreadsheet often don't agree with those in the Pledge Transaction table. Sometimes a single capital repayment by the borrower is paid and recorded in the spreadsheet across 2 different dates (a different date for manual and auto pledges, or for standard and ISA accounts). The number of possible combinations of actual repayment dates escalates rapidly. When you add to this the possibility of multiple capital repayment dates during a penalty period, the task becomes well beyond my abilities. To be clear, I don't regularly attempt to calculate that interest has been correctly calculated. I trust CP to get the calculation "about" right. If I didn't I would stop lending. I feel that I should also make it clear that I am in fact a big fan of CP, both as a lender and as a very minor equity investor. I'm not trying to dissuade potential investors from using them, quite the opposite, but I think it's important that forums like this highlight any potential shortcomings to allow them to be fully informed. I've introduced many tens of people to the platform, and am still doing so. They've been my second largest platform for a long time now. If I could magically reallocate my funds across all platforms right now CP would likely be my largest platform. I'd rate CP as probably the second safest platform in the industry after Loanpad. I'm aware that the tardy payment of retained interest won't make a massive difference to our overall returns, but for me it's disrespectful to lenders not to pay it promptly. I get that they have what they consider to be higher priorities, but they've known about this issue for at least 6 months (and probably years). If they don't have sufficient staff to be able to pay retained interest until 2 months after it is due then they simply don't have sufficient staff. Why the systems haven't been updated to automatically pay retained interest on the due dates Is beyond me. Had they done so 6 months ago they would have saved staff hours by now. There are many issues on CP that need addressing, but the late payment of retained interest is the one that irks me most. I get that from a business viewpoint they currently have an oversupply of lenders, and therefore wish to prioritise the borrower side. I don't expect the issues to be fixed overnight, but I do expect them to be fixed in a reasonable time, which I think they have failed to do. Just look at the massive leap forward that Kuflink have made in regard to allowing easy access to project updates, while CP's unusable system has remained unmodified across several years.
Based on the actual paid interest it's apparent capital repayments can be made at least 10 days after the interest calculation date. Making it impossible to check interest precisely for loans which have interim repayments. The same loan I picked at random had multiple repayments but no final email message to say the loan has been completed! Strat* Ro*. Everything is out of sync. They won't be able to fix anything without a software rewrite, can't see that happening.
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Post by overthehill on Jun 16, 2022 19:07:05 GMT
Sorry posted this in the CP forum by mistake, should have been the Proplend forum!
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We have just released an update to the Lender Dashboard
1. Loan Messages can now be searched by;
property;
message type;
read & unread; and
Loan Messages are now available on Mobile view
2. In the Loans Tab of the dashboard, there is a new In Funding tab;
when a Loan is available for Self-Select it will now show under a separate In Funding tab; and
when a Loan is 100% funded, it will move to the Waiting to Close tab
3. When a Loan is available for Self-Select (In Funding)
you can view the Loan details, as per usual and then jump to the Self-Select console by clicking Invest Here; or
if you go the Self-Select console first, you can jump to that Loan's Info page
4. In the Portfolio tab, on mobile view, the Loans Maturity / End Date, now shows without having to click through to each individual £1,000 loan part.
We take Lender feedback very seriously and over the past few months have, we believe, significantly improved the information available and used experience of the Lender Dashboard.
Best regards
The Proplend Team
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