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Post by frank121 on Jul 9, 2023 10:08:04 GMT
Hi All, I received an email from Kufflink last week advising that the initial investment was rising to 1K. The email spouts being clear but is far from it - at least to me. Does this mean each loan needs to be funded with 1K (I doubt and hope not) or is it just the minimum amount that new customers have to transfer to their wallet and can still invest into each loan at the current minimums? Currently there is a minimum of £100 for their auto products and barely no minimum for the select products. Will this remain the same or not? Did anyone else receive this email and have a better understanding on this? I have emailed Kufflink last week about this but have yet to receive a reply and could find nothing on their website about this change. If they are planning to impose 1K per loans then this is no longer a platform for me. Thanks, Frank
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jcb208
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Post by jcb208 on Jul 9, 2023 10:34:06 GMT
Yes I did and I can not make head and tails of the email ,If it is £1k per loan then their investor numbers will be a lot lower .Not bothered myself as Im slowly exiting all peer to peer as with the failures I have not been very successful
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Post by uksoul on Jul 9, 2023 10:44:19 GMT
Hi All, I received an email from Kufflink last week advising that the initial investment was rising to 1K. The email spouts being clear but is far from it - at least to me. Does this mean each loan needs to be funded with 1K (I doubt and hope not) or is it just the minimum amount that new customers have to transfer to their wallet and can still invest into each loan at the current minimums? Currently there is a minimum of £100 for their auto products and barely no minimum for the select products. Will this remain the same or not? Did anyone else receive this email and have a better understanding on this? I have emailed Kufflink last week about this but have yet to receive a reply and could find nothing on their website about this change. If they are planning to impose 1K per loans then this is no longer a platform for me. Thanks, Frank All Kufflinkers received this email. It is for just the initial investment from new investors. New investors can not gain access to the SM until they have made the 1K investment.
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ilmoro
Member of DD Central
'Wondering which of the bu***rs to blame, and watching for pigs on the wing.' - Pink Floyd
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Post by ilmoro on Jul 9, 2023 10:50:32 GMT
Hi All, I received an email from Kufflink last week advising that the initial investment was rising to 1K. The email spouts being clear but is far from it - at least to me. Does this mean each loan needs to be funded with 1K (I doubt and hope not) or is it just the minimum amount that new customers have to transfer to their wallet and can still invest into each loan at the current minimums? Currently there is a minimum of £100 for their auto products and barely no minimum for the select products. Will this remain the same or not? Did anyone else receive this email and have a better understanding on this? I have emailed Kufflink last week about this but have yet to receive a reply and could find nothing on their website about this change. If they are planning to impose 1K per loans then this is no longer a platform for me. Thanks, Frank No, only the initial investment needs to be £1000 invested into one loan, after that you can invest as before with the only criteria being the minimum investment level set for the specific loan (enough to generate 1p interest at the point of investment) I would agree the wording of the email was unclear but it is explained in the FAQ
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rscal
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Post by rscal on Jul 9, 2023 10:52:44 GMT
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Post by Ace on Jul 9, 2023 11:07:32 GMT
The FAQs do make the facts of the situation clear (a great shame that the email didn't).
Does anyone have any idea why? It seems completely unnecessary to me. Why would they insist that a first investment has to be at least £1k, but all other investments after that can be as low as £2? Once the initial £1k has repaid you could invest £2 in a single loan.
What's the driver here? More nonsense from the FCA? Someone with £1k to invest could previously have had a sensibly diverse spread of 20 £50 loans. Now they would need to risk it all on a single loan! Seems like madness to me.
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Post by uksoul on Jul 9, 2023 11:17:15 GMT
Maybe they have seen the success of Proplend and its` 1K min in a single investment and replicating. Does contradict the USP of Kuflink of being able to invest just a couple of quid. The FCA does not insist on min investment levels.
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Post by Ace on Jul 9, 2023 11:28:47 GMT
Maybe they have seen the success of Proplend and its` 1K min in a single investment and replicating. Does contradict the USP of Kuflink of being able to invest just a couple of quid. The FCA does not insist on min investment levels. But they're not implementing anything like Proplend £1k minimum. Here it's just for a first investment. They're happy with £2 investments after that. I realise it's not a written FCA rule, but I'm aware that the FCA does put pressure on platforms regarding minimums (can't say more). Here, it looks like someone has been given some instructions and has misunderstood them, leading to an unfathomable new rule. It makes diversification harder, and hence less safe. Crazy IMO. EDIT: I guess what I'm really asking is, what problem does this new rule solve?
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jnm21
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Post by jnm21 on Jul 9, 2023 11:58:37 GMT
Maybe they have seen the success of Proplend and its` 1K min in a single investment and replicating. Does contradict the USP of Kuflink of being able to invest just a couple of quid. The FCA does not insist on min investment levels. But they're not implementing anything like Proplend £1k minimum. Here it's just for a first investment. They're happy with £2 investments after that. I realise it's not a written FCA rule, but I'm aware that the FCA does put pressure on platforms regarding minimums (can't say more). Here, it looks like someone has been given some instructions and has misunderstood them, leading to an unfathomable new rule. It makes diversification harder, and hence less safe. Crazy IMO. EDIT: I guess what I'm really asking is, what problem does this new rule solve? No idea what perceived problem it will solve, but having been scarred by P2P sleepless nights, I'd say it will solve the problem of people investing smaller amounts when they either can't afford larger (and thus can't afford to lose even the smaller amount) or don't want to invest more because they are unsure & possibly out of their depth. Both were largely true of me. I was lucky to be in Kuflink early on (the 20% Kuflink first in last out era), so never lost anything with them - never really any sleep even.
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Post by uksoul on Jul 9, 2023 12:27:24 GMT
Maybe they have seen the success of Proplend and its` 1K min in a single investment and replicating. Does contradict the USP of Kuflink of being able to invest just a couple of quid. The FCA does not insist on min investment levels. But they're not implementing anything like Proplend £1k minimum. Here it's just for a first investment. They're happy with £2 investments after that. I realise it's not a written FCA rule, but I'm aware that the FCA does put pressure on platforms regarding minimums (can't say more). Here, it looks like someone has been given some instructions and has misunderstood them, leading to an unfathomable new rule. It makes diversification harder, and hence less safe. Crazy IMO. EDIT: I guess what I'm really asking is, what problem does this new rule solve? I can`t see any problem it solves apart from beefing up cash reserves, helping loans to be funded more from investors rather than kuflink reserves.
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Post by Ace on Jul 9, 2023 12:36:31 GMT
But they're not implementing anything like Proplend £1k minimum. Here it's just for a first investment. They're happy with £2 investments after that. I realise it's not a written FCA rule, but I'm aware that the FCA does put pressure on platforms regarding minimums (can't say more). Here, it looks like someone has been given some instructions and has misunderstood them, leading to an unfathomable new rule. It makes diversification harder, and hence less safe. Crazy IMO. EDIT: I guess what I'm really asking is, what problem does this new rule solve? I can`t see any problem it solves apart from beefing up cash reserves, helping loans to be funded more from investors rather than kuflink reserves. If that's their thinking (they'll get more cash from investors), I think they are very mistaken. I've introduced many to Kuflink that have invested well into 6 figures between them. I doubt that many of them would have taken the plunge under this new restriction. They have hundreds of loan parts between them, none of which will be over £1k.
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upland
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Post by upland on Jul 9, 2023 12:40:08 GMT
I must admit that it threw me also. I found it about as easy to understand as when AC explained how the 90 day access accounts were going to work. I also am not sure why and what problem does it solve. I certainly dont feel that Proplend and Kuflink are in the same league as the Proplend offer is somewhat different from Kuflinks.
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p2pfan
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Post by p2pfan on Jul 9, 2023 12:44:39 GMT
As somebody who has run plenty of businesses in my life, I can see the logic of having a minimum £1k investment in total. It may not be apparent to people who have not run businesses and dealt with customers on a daily basis.
A customer who invests, say, £60 in total often requires the same, if not more, onboarding, paperwork, administration, management and customer service work as somebody investing £60,000 or £600,000. There is therefore no profit for a business like Kuflink to have customers who only invest £60 or £200 in aggregate.
The P2P businesses who took on board large numbers of smaller investors, such as Assetz Capital, Zopa and FundingCircle, discovered just how much management they took, how unprofitable it was, and therefore moved towards only working with institutional investors who take a lot less work pro rata than managing thousands of investors of often relatively small amounts.
With the businesses I've run, the clients with the smaller budgets usually required much more resources devoted to them than those with larger budgets. They were less knowledgeable, less likely to diligently study what was being offered to them, and were regularly picking up the phone making one hour long phone calls asking basic questions.
A rational and logical decision to have a minimum spend of £1k. It should be higher.
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Post by uksoul on Jul 9, 2023 12:52:57 GMT
As somebody who has run plenty of businesses in my life, I can see the logic of having a minimum £1k investment in total. It may not be apparent to people who have not run businesses and dealt with customers on a daily basis. A customer who invests, say, £60 in total often requires the same, if not more, onboarding, paperwork, administration, management and customer service work as somebody investing £60,000 or £600,000. There is therefore no profit for a business like Kuflink to have customers who only invest £60 or £200 in aggregate. The P2P businesses who took on board large numbers of smaller investors, such as Assetz Capital, Zopa and FundingCircle, discovered just how much management they took, how unprofitable it was, and therefore moved towards only working with institutional investors who take a lot less work pro rata than managing thousands of investors of often relatively small amounts. With the businesses I've run, the clients with the smaller budgets usually required much more resources devoted to them than those with larger budgets. They were less knowledgeable, less likely to diligently study what was being offered to them, and were regularly picking up the phone making one hour long phone calls asking basic questions. A rational and logical decision to have a minimum spend of £1k. It should be higher. should be higher ? how much higher do you think it should be _
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Post by frank121 on Jul 9, 2023 13:19:19 GMT
Many thanks for the replies and nice to see it promoted a healthy discussion. I did check the F&Q's just after receiving the email but failed to find anything; not sure if I didn't look hard enough or they were not available at that time. I should have looked again before posting but thanks to everyone for clarifying. I fully agree with Ace's points. I think this move will just alienate many new investors. Personally I don’t think any of Kuflink’s loans deserve 1K of my money. They have too many loans listed with many tranches and I don’t believe the level of due diligence is the same as some of the platforms with higher minimums for all loans. I am pretty sure a lot of investors just want to start small and see how the platform operates and forcing them to stick 1K in loan is bizarre especially as after that you are free to invest much smaller amounts. I am lucky (or maybe not!) that I joined a few months ago, else I wouldn’t be willing to do this. I am generally investing £20-£50 per loan and the portfolio is now 1.6K now across many loans. (with the aim to keep increasing) Perhaps for the auto investor this change is less obvious i.e they may not know their 1K is likely to be invested in single loan and hence are more likely to agree. Still I think this ruins the USP of Kuflink and was a major factor in me joining them. if Kuflink's aim is to scare away investors like me then it’s working.
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