Newbie Qs on underwriting / shadow bids whatever

You cant take part in loans until they are drawndown as Ac no longer uses an open auction system. All new loans are made available to underwriters to bid on and once they are filled and drawndown, then us mortals can grab a share as and when the UW sell down their holdings. You can set an investment target on pending loans the same way as you do with other loans, which the system will attempt to fulfill once UW release it to the market. 

Cant comment on amount of 000 or benefits of UW but there are a few loitering around the forums who can. 

Shadow bids were a feature of the old system which allowed significant lenders to pledge money to loans and then fund their account once to loan was due to drawdown. They do not exist under the new system but as some loans that had auctions on the old system still havent drawndown there are still some shadow bids potentially outstanding.

Firstly as others have said Shadow Bidding was a thing of the past so not worth spending time on.

Within the AC system there are currently two products the manual(?) product generally referred to as the MLIA and the automatic GEIA which automatically invests your fund in Green(?) loans and manages the diversification of your funds across eligible loans.

The key thing to remember with AC is there is only a secondary market as all loans are initially fully funded by underwriters who then have to release a certain amount of the loan to retail investors once the loans are drawn down and there are no bids, the platform is based around targets.

In the MLIA you set a target for the total you want to invest in an individual loan, inject some cash into your MLIA and wait. If there is more of the loan available for sale than there are unfulfilled targets backed by free cash then your target will be fully fulfilled, however if the overall total of unfulfilled targets backed by free cash out weighs the amount that is put up for sale then the platform will share the available amount of loan across all the accounts with unfulfilled targets backed by free cash and so you target will be only partially fulfilled. Once you have an investment in a loan you have the choice of disabling the target (the loan will will amortise if it is an amortising loan), leave the target running (the platform will constantly attempt to maintain the the principle amount you hold even if the loan is amortising), increase your target (the platform will attempt to increase you holding to match the target), reduce the target (if the target is below your holding the platform will attempt to sell the excess). It is important to note that although this is referred to a manual account your control over where funds are directed is limited and your free cash will be invested wherever you have targets set and loans become available.

With very few loans coming through the AC pipeline the only ones that are generally available are either ones which are unpopular or very large so lenders have typically had their fill.

My personal view is that the platform as it stands now is geared to regular savers putting in a few pounds each month which the platform will eventually absorb rather than large investors wishing put in larger 3 figure plus sums in one hit.