Q&A - would another session be useful?

No.

By all means answer questions as they come in and I think AC should be commended for the way they do this but as I see it, previous Q & A sessions have produced a lot of "wishlist" questions which must surely divert AC staff from more important duties.

Just keep up the good work by promptly answering routine questions.

Agree with yorkshireman on this. AC are overall very active around these forums and usually handle issues as and when time permits which always helps lender/investor confidence. So keep up the good work guys.

For many these type of decisions will include pensions. Back in October you told us that "We have the first live and are just testing how it works. Once we are happy, we will release more details of how you can also put SIPPs to work."

Can you give any indication on progress and/or timescale?

OK

SIPPs - Our current partner is SIPP Club and they have relationships with other P2P platforms, not just AC.  This would allow you to invest via us and also into other platforms to diversify the risk.  If you speak to them, please mention I referred you.


RBS - This is still early days.  They are currently in the process of rolling out the programme internally and I expect the first few leads to start coming through in the next week or so.  I do not expect a torrent just yet as there is an education process for the RMs to go through but we are working to improve the flow.


Institutional monies and deal flow - This is a catch 22 for most platforms.  Borrowers want certainty of funding, lenders want certainty of deal flow.  The institutional monies give that certainty that funding is there and also allow us to compete on a much wider scale.  Look at the growth of FC in recent months given the funding lines.  What is at the front of our minds is that we don't forget the crowd.  Everything we have done to date has been funded by you the crowd.

The first funds will flow later this month.  To put minds at rest, loans selected for the funds will be completely random and there is no cherry picking by the fund.  February deal flow is looking extremely healthy and could be our first £10m+ month following a sedate December and January.  I have worked in this market (debt range £100k-£10m) for 15 years and the trends have always been the same.  August is quiet, December and January are very quiet.  It seems this trend is the same for AC as it has followed this pattern for the last two years.  That said,  March could see us hit £15m of lending in one month given the pipeline we have.

What we did in 2014 was off resource equivalent to 2.5 full time RMs.  We now have 5 full time RMs, 3 full time credit sanctioners and a host of support staff.  There are more staff to come.  By the end of H1, we should be over 10 RMs and by the end of the year I wouldn't be surprised to see 20 or so.  The sales channel also has dedicated focus with David Hamer being brought in to run that side of the business.  His impact in the 4 months he has been with us has been huge, so expect to see the volumes quoted being hit.

We have some very good monitoring systems and we know what the current capacity within the retail lender base is fairly accurately.  We will ensure there is sufficient deals available to retail lenders and institutions will be picking up the surplus.  I want to make it very clear, we are not dropping credit quality and we are not only leaving the higher risk loans to the retail crowd.  We have seen comments made about perceptions of other platforms when institutional monies have come in.


Invoice Finance - I expect the first few deals will be picked up this month but funded by an institutional line while we get used to the process.  I do not expect to be able to offer a solid flow of these deals to the crowd until Q2.  We have to build the pipeline first so that there is a reasonable offering to all of the retail lenders.


FCA - It was reported recently that the FCA had issued warnings to a number of platforms about breaches of the financial promotions rules.  I can say categorically that AC did not receive any warnings and we continue to treat the regulations with the respect they deserve.  I have worked my whole career within a regulated environment in both banking and accountancy, and I see no reason to be flouting these rules.  I have said many times that protection of the lenders' interests runs deep within the culture of AC and the FCA rules are there to do just that, protect the retail investor.


AC is in a good position for 2015.  I've expanded the team which allows me to concentrate on delivering new sales channels (possibly more banks or more products) and also further funding lines to supplement the different deal types we have.  I do keep track of what is being said on here, but as I have said previously as the business grows my time becomes stretched.

Thank you for your continued support of the business.  It is that support that has got AC to this point, and that continued support will help make AC a true long term sustainable business.

Andrew

Sign me up for the notifications. Sorely needed! An sms option had also been talked about last summer at the lenders' event (perhaps useful in 2H 2015 for new loans when deal flow is supper zippy), shorter term anything (eg updates section on homepage listing loans where important updates - including points raised on Q&A - have occurred) would be fantastic.

I'd vote for notice of possible Early Redemptions to be included. For example even a wee list of loans most likely to redeem in order of "likeliness".  Even if subjective & with order likely to vary (as borrowers advance/pull away from a possible redemption) it would point us lenders to having a look at these loans & adjusting our targets as appropriate (hence also adding fizz to the AM). Can see ER's happening more this year, something to track this most useful.


Excellent update andrewholgate, much appreciated.

Just seen this

www.altfi.com/news/727

quite interesting. Any comments?

We also have some property backed ones coming too, good sizes. I am optimistic everyone's appetites will be sated very imminently. £1.3m one about to get underwritten this weekend I hear and drawn very quickly for example.