Ratesetter giving loans of more than £25000??

Thank you bigfoot12 for your answer.
Ratesetter FAQ does make a mention of secure/unsecure, however it also does mention that any loan can be of £25K maximum (depending on circumstances, but 25K is still the max).
The amounts that you and I have noticed, £100K+/£250K/£300K+, are more like mortgages, not loans and therefore should not fall onto ratesetter's domain. These are huge amounts and RateSetter makes no mention in their statistics of what such loans are for (like for buying a car, decorating a house, paying for shcool, pay-off debts, etc...). Who would ask for a loan of more than £100K+/£250K/£300K+ and for what?
This seems all very shadowy to me.

You seem to be assuming that each RS loan = 1 individual personal person. We know that isn't the case.

Thanks pepperpot for the link and davee39 for the extra information.
Thanks to this, I've also found more information as to what RS intentions and directions are, all very concerning to me:

www.ratesetter.com/Blog/Article/Gaining_depth_and_breadth

A few of points of concern are:

* There is still no information whatsoever on RS website, apart from hidden in the blog above, about loans being made by lenders to businesses and sole traders. This is wrong and a troubling development in transparency.
* This is not P2P anymore but P2B, a much riskier venture and not what I chose RS for originally.
* No information about the businesses that money is being lent to.

I originally started lending on RS, since Sept 2014 only, 'knowing' or assuming that my money was going to other _individuals_ and accepted much lower rates for this (than on other platforms such as Funding Circle or Ablrate).
I have however been lending with Funding Circle for the last 2 years as well, knowing that my money was going to businesses and that some effort was required in understanding the business(es) and in spending time bidding for my money to be lent. I have therefore accepted much higher rates for this, which even after bad debt never went below 7% gross (even on A+, ie: thoses businesses that are assessed as the safest on FC), so even my avg return is much higher.

Many thanks to all of you who replied and helped me understand what RS is doing.
As you point out davee39, the current regulation is of low standards but that should not prevent RS from being open and go beyond what the regulator asks them to do. That would have been, to me, a very competitive aspect of keeping using that platform. We are a bunch a well informed people I believe (or strive to be, when money is involved) and RS, with it's lack of information and transparency seems to be assuming it is dealing with a bunch of dummies. This has permanently killed off any trust I had in them.

As far as competition goes, I've now started withdrawing my funds from RS as they get repaid (monthly and 3-year markets) and put them now into zopa (to which I am a newcomer as of today :-) ) and others, wife to start with and friends as we discuss and review different peer lending platforms, will follow in my steps.

Indeed pikestaff, like you I treat p2p and p2b separately and use different platforms for these.

Anyway, interestingly, the post below by a ratesetter representative proudly announced recently in another thread ("RateSetter in the news"):
p2pindependentforum.com/thread/1809/ratesetter-news

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Jan 19, 2015 at 7:03pm westonkevRS said:

This feels like old news to me, but it's good that people know we are profitable as this helps ensure the risk of platform failure diminishes:

www.standard.co.uk/business/business-news/peertopeer-lender-ratesetter-bullish-on-2015-prospects-9988130.html

"Ratesetter made £104,000 in the year to March 2014"

Kevin.
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The relevant extract from that link is:

"Ratesetter allows investors to lend to either businesses or the public while setting their risk parameters"

That article is from the Standard but or no-one, not even Ratesetter, reacted to that statement or everyone (apart from agent69, to whom ratesetter did not reply) accepted that:

* Lenders have the choice of lending to either the public or businesses...??
* Lenders can set their risk parameters...??

What does the lender know or where does he find information about the businesses and how are they assessed by RS?....a credit agency or even two won't suffice or is just not adequate for that.
Again, no official information reflects that announcement on the RS website and it still shows £25K as being the maximum loan.

Banks hold reserves because they lend money they do not have!!  A 10% Reserve would provide some cover if lenders demanded their money back.

RS lends, in general, under matched contracts where early return of funds depends on availability of new money. The exception is the monthly account where funds might not be available on maturity.

I would suggest that this discussion indicates that while RS deserves a place in a P2P portfolio, there is also a place for diversity, even at lower rates elsewhere. It might be a mistake to shun RS entirely in favour of bottom fishing among the seedier competition. As RS grows they do have some work to do in creating a clear and transparent FAQ explaining how the lending model works, who the borrowers are and the role of the institutions.

One final point, do not take comments in newspaper articles at face value.  The people who write these articles (hacks, not journalists) have space to fill, and any old rubbish will do!

You invests your money and makes your choice, as the saying almost goes.

You might want to additionally check out each company's accounts at Companies House if you haven't already done so.  Indeed I'd recommend every investor does that with every platform they consider using for investment.