sl75
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Post by sl75 on Mar 4, 2022 11:45:22 GMT
[Subject of this thread is intended to attract attention of those in a broadly similar situation who are not (yet) aware of the reasons... I'm personally fully aware of why, and don't need it explaining to me!]
I've been kicking up a disproportionate amount of fuss with Zopa about them having requisitioned my entire loan portfolio without notification and with no payment whatsoever, primarily because it seemed likely to me that there would be other investors less aware, but more heavily affected than me, and I wanted to have their backs... but as I wrote the below, I've begun to have doubts over whether those other investors even exist...
I've made no new loans via the platform for over 6 years now due to changes in personal circumstances that Zopa took as making me ineligible to continue lending, but existing loans still stood. In the intervening years almost all of the defaults have either fully run their course or been sold, but the recovery income was quite significant up to about 2 years ago.
However, even up to Dec 2021, there was still a dribble of residual income representing a few pence per month from loans that had defaulted many years ago. Technically this income is worth more than the £0.00 that Zopa "paid" for it. This is a different situation to those who still had active loans where the overpayment ("at face value" as per the busy thread generated by the announcement at the time) for loans in arrears should have more than made up for the residual income from the relatively few defaults that were still in recoveries, but Zopa should have entirely foreseen that overpayments made to one group of investors do not make up for underpayments to a different group of investors!
It seemed likely to me based on how the level of recoveries had declined in recent years that a hypothetical investor who had stopped lending maybe 2-4 years ago would be in a similar situation to where my portfolio had been 2-4 years ago, with no "active" loans but monthly income that was "significant" enough to warrant bothering to log in and withdraw it.
Although I pointed out that no "sale" can have occurred if the "buyer" has not paid anything at all, and during the discussion, Zopa further admitted that they intentionally excluded investors like me with no "active" loans from the 7th December announcement (which was forwarded to me personally only as a result of this complaint, but as far as I know not to other affected investors), eventually, Zopa stuck by their position that this is their final response, and that no payment is due to investors whose portfolio income was suddenly stopped without notification or any form of compensation.
For myself personally, I see no point escalating the complaint to the FSO for an amount that is almost certainly negligible in my own case, and I have no direct evidence that the hypothetical investors who were much more heavily affected than me even exist, but I wondered if there were in fact any others who had still had a "significant" monthly income from recoveries (e.g. a few pounds per month) that was abruptly stopped in January by Zopa taking their loans with no notification and no payment, and for whom it might be worth escalating such a complaint further.
Do any such hypothetical investors exist, or had everyone who had no "active" loans remaining been similarly reduced to just a few pence of recoveries per month due to the debt sales (which quite possibly make the situation of those who stopped lending 2-4 years ago very different to what I saw 2-4 years after I'd stopped lending) making such a complaint petty? I note a mention of 21p from two accounts after a two year haitus over on the other thread, so on reflection, perhaps rather than being one of the smaller amounts as I'd initially supposed, my residual income of a few pence per month after debt sales was actually relatively high compared to other investors (more of whose loans were eligible for the debt sales) so that there's effectively nobody else that I was "complaining on behalf of"...?
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wapping35
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Post by wapping35 on Mar 5, 2022 12:38:07 GMT
Keeping it short. I have been negatively impacted to a reasonable significant extent due to the zero payout for defaults. I lodged a complaint with the expectation it would need to go to the FOS (Financial Ombudsman Service) and as expected I have an active complaint they are considering since Jan 16 2022.
They indicated due to a backlog of active issues it will take +4 months to reach a conclusion.
The FOS has said they will publish (with personal details redacted) the conclusion of the case and I intend to post a link to the that when that is completed and available.
I am not sure whether the resolution of my issue will result in changes for others even if it is in my favour partially or fully.
In view of the above I would suggest if others feel they have incurred a significant loss they too lodge a claim but that is of course up to them and I would add it does take up quite a lot of time and resources.
Regards W35
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Post by barnsleybiker on Mar 5, 2022 12:50:54 GMT
In December 2021, the last few days before the big announcement that zopa were taking over all the loans I made an unexpected frightening loss of over £600 due to defaults. this was incredibly unusual to be this high! then the takeover loan news came through and all interest stopped, my investment wasn't able to recover anything or makeup the loss before I was handed my investment money back.
do i feel robbed, YES I DO!
did I complain to Zopa?
yep, got nowhere, they just passed me the ombudsman's details,
I wish Zopa and their new endeavours all the bad luck in the world, I hope the fleas of a 1000 camels infest their underwear from now until the end of time! PAH!
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sl75
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Post by sl75 on Mar 5, 2022 16:23:11 GMT
Thanks both for widening my perspective a bit beyond the fairly narrow class of investors I thought would be most negatively impacted (the ones that Zopa admitted they'd intentionally excluded from the Dec 7th announcement), and wish you well with your respective complaints to the ombudsman.
It seems that my few pence per month that was cut off was indeed one of the smaller amounts as I'd originally supposed.
Would be good if it can all be resolved before the end of the current UK tax year, to avoid having to include a further final amount in 2022/23 tax return if/when Zopa might be instructed to treat their (former) customers fairly.
One of their justifications they kept repeating to me was that almost all defaults were purchased in the most recent debt sale in September, and that the remaining ones were defaults that couldn't be sold ... which was probably true in my case, but clearly not for the wider customer base if they were cynically marking more loans as default after that date so that they wouldn't have to pay the investors for them!
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aju
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Post by aju on Mar 5, 2022 18:35:17 GMT
Thanks for posting this as it chivied me up to getting round to building a set of tables i could use to see what we lost in the sales if anything.
Whilst we had a considerable number of defaults by the end, looking at our numbers the defaults that went to Zopa amounted to approx 30% of the final returned amount we received. Not very helpful i know but suffice to say we are just under 7k up on the whole event despite some 4k+ lost in defaults over the years since 2006 - I think it was then!.
What i can say though having looked at the process across our 4 accounts over the last few months there does not seem to have been any marked instance of Zopa suddenly having turned the default taps on near the end at least from our data.
I have looked at the defaults and settled's over the period from September to the end and i cannot see that they returned very much in September for us but that's not really a very good indicator and more likely it was not our defaults that were sold. Also cannot see any marked increase in default rates since September either just large numbers spread over the last 2 years mainly due to covid i suspect. Luckily i pulled the loanbook tables regularly since the lost of statements detail.
I will say though that since the s/w changes made early last year - removing detailed statements among other things - made it much harder to keep tabs on things that might have gone wrong at that level as happened in the past. One also wonders if they knew that far back that they were going to stop P2P when they did it but I guess that's another story.
Not sure that helps much if at all but again thanks.
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