iren
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Post by iren on May 28, 2015 16:11:06 GMT
I agree regarding the issue of loans trading on a secondary market: there needs to be a system where all transactions are frozen where there is a change in the status of a loan. I've seen this on AC: if a payment is not made within the grace period, purchases/sales are frozen. But there is a loophole where negative information is received before any payments are missed. In one loan recently, I found myself picking up parts of a loan from multiple sellers and investigated, to find that accounts had been uploaded showing a much deteriorated position. I quickly resold the loan. A few days later, there was an announcement that the borrower could no longer make his full monthly payments in current trading conditions. It's inevitable that some loans will not perform but it's another thing to find that you've only acquired the loan because it is not performing, and the guy who has had the benefit of the payments during the good times has been able to palm it off on you.
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Post by ablrateandy on May 28, 2015 16:29:13 GMT
Thanks iren and james . We have a function called "Is Paused" (Yes - sometimes developers are a bit unimaginative in deploying suggestions!). This enables us to kill all bids and offers in a loan and suspend the secondary market instantly. We will certainly do this if we receive news of any sort that could impact repayments. Edit : That would obviously apply to both AutoInvest accounts and manual accounts.
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indy
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Post by indy on May 29, 2015 8:01:56 GMT
It sounds like your new platform is going to be all singing all dancing..........but can you make sure it is user friendly and not too complicated. You need a degree in quantum physics to understand the TC secondary market where as the SS platform is user friendly and a pleasure to use and therefore is very liquid.
It would also be useful to have some sort of instant deposit again along the lines of SS.
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Post by meledor on May 29, 2015 8:39:31 GMT
It would also be useful to have some sort of instant deposit again along the lines of SS.
It's been a couple of months since I used it but I thought Ablrate's deposit system was instantaneous. In fact I consider it best of breed and think that other platforms (including SS which in my opinion is not as good as it is in effect a 2 stage process) ought to have it as well.
Good to hear about progress with the new site and looking forward to seeing the new loans.
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Post by ablrate on May 29, 2015 9:36:36 GMT
Thank you James, huxs, il moro, indy, duck, stevet, larkincj. It always amazes me the time and effort you guys, and others on the forum, put into the feedback you give us and the other platforms, there is definitely gold in some of the things you have pointed out here.
I will keep this brief, I also don't want to preempt some of the things you will see on the platform next week but some of things that the SM can do will assist in keeping the market fair. Some of the things that you have mentioned that we are working through on AI:
1. Opt in/out - we feel that this important, especially for SIPP accounts for example. We are looking at different ways of implementing this - the inevitable thing when discussing this is you paint yourself into a corner - because ultimately, if you give too many choices of opt-in/out and approvals along the way, the system no longer becomes automatic! So it is about finding a balance between the two. 2. Choice - as we have said, AI will be purely optional. 3. AI being in front of manual lenders - we are working through ideas to give manual lenders time against AI lenders. 4. duck mentions a very good point about the loans choice being the 'platform's decision'. We are not keen on anonymous auto-matching and too much meddling in what loans you want to own, and think this may have regulatory problems in the future. It does have a place, in fixed income trades for example, but the structure needs to be correct and that is a story for another day ( something we are working on also). So to avoid 'auto-matching' and possibly being accused down the line of 'deposit taking' or running some kind of collective investment, we will be building AI on the basis that you programmed it, so it's your decision. You will be able to see what you own, and do with it what you will, the only input we essentially have is the algorithm instructing who gets what,when and under what circumstances - and we have a few plans on that. Of course that requires us to build out as many tools as we can on AI - and these will be rolled out systematically. 5. Impaired loans - Our thoughts on this are that we don't believe that an impaired loan should be able to be traded if there are problems with it. Our thoughts behind this are that there is too many opportunities for abuse of the system. This is why we have a 'Paused Loan' situation on the new platform which takes it out of the SM when we become aware of any problems. Some will not be happy about this, but it does stop potential abuses of the SM.
These are just some of the initial thoughts on your feedback... happy to hear more from all of you and thanks again.
The update on the new platform is that we had the latest release last night and we are making good progress. We have an update with the developers today after the testing we did last night and this morning. There are some slight snags, but nothing earth shattering, so we expect to be able to continue on the planned timetable.
Regards Ablrate
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SteveT
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Post by SteveT on May 29, 2015 9:48:25 GMT
Given that most of us lack bottomless wealth so will have to channel funds to Ablrate from other platforms, which takes time, can you give us some forward visibility of your planned new loan listings? For example, likely number of new loans and ballpark total (or average) value over the first week and first month? Many thanks.
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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 May 29, 2015 10:00:45 GMT
Given that most of us lack bottomless wealth so will have to channel funds to Ablrate from other platforms, which takes time, can you give us some forward visibility of your planned new loan listings? For example, likely number of new loan and ballpark total (or average) value over the first week and first month? Many thanks. Maybe we could have email to existing lenders with a preview of the forthcoming loans? Youve teased us with details of the new platform. Now I would like to be teased with pictures of planes, trains & automobiles ... well some planes at least, possibly the odd boat, some crates & a pop bottle
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Post by ablrate on May 29, 2015 10:30:42 GMT
Stevet, ilmoro
We will be giving an update to all on upcoming loans probably Monday... one of the things that will be different on the new platform is that we will be able to have loans bubbling away in the background as 'scheduled loans' - for a number of reasons these will be only available to underwriters, but it will allow us to keep you more up to date on the loan pipeline. Obviously we are now ramping up the origination after this beta period, we are adding some very experienced new staff and we aim to have a regular selection for you to evaluate.
Regards Ablrate
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Post by ablrate on Jun 1, 2015 20:18:46 GMT
Hi all
Quick update.
1. All the content blocks completed for the new site 2. Final secondary market glitches fixed 3. Uploaded to live server 4. Final data migration going ahead tomorrow
We should be all ready to go on the live server tomorrow with the domain re-pointed tomorrow/Wednesday.. when its all propagated we should be live and ready to go... can't wait!
Loans... we will probably spend a couple of days making sure everything is all good alongside you guys. Then we will be uploading the new loans over the coming days. As a taser we have another ATR, two Twin Otters, a Cessna Caravan, some capital equipment loans and we hope to have a couple of others that we can't mention just yet.
I will give a more detailed update when we are live. Regards Ablrate
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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 Jun 1, 2015 21:49:37 GMT
Loans... we will probably spend a couple of days making sure everything is all good alongside you guys. Then we will be uploading the new loans over the coming days. As a taser we have another ATR, two Twin Otters, a Cessna Caravan, some capital equipment loans and we hope to have a couple of others that we can't mention just yet. Is that the new marketing strategy? You just electrocute lenders until they invest. Sounds good, just need to find some cash now ' They call Mr. Pedantic, say me spelling fantastic...'
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Post by ablrate on Jun 2, 2015 14:37:06 GMT
lol... yes the new platform has a feature that power surges when you haven't logged in and bid for over 5 days and you get tasered... we can't find anything in the FCA rules outlawing this.. depending on your definition of 'treating customers fairly'...
.... we are in the middle of doing some corporate videos... while its all set up is here anything you would like to see us explain?
Taking requests for the next couple of hours..
Lots of updates from developers have been coming today, by the way... looks like we will be all good to go very shortly.
Regards Ablrate
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SteveT
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Post by SteveT on Jun 2, 2015 15:24:00 GMT
Provided you also taser any institutional lenders equally, that sounds fine.
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Post by ablrateandy on Jun 4, 2015 19:54:13 GMT
The boss is busy making his corporate video so I will do the update We still have one error that needs sorting out but it should be a quick fix. Everything else is functioning as expected. Assuming that it is indeed a quick fix, all data goes to the live server tomorrow morning and fingers crossed we are Live on Monday. Thanks for your patience so far. We should update tomorrow as soon as we know that the developers are 100% confident in getting the fix done.
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Post by henders on Jun 8, 2015 11:18:23 GMT
Update?
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Post by ablrate on Jun 8, 2015 11:35:38 GMT
Hi All
Quick update:
We should have the release on live server in the next hour or so. We will then be testing the integrity of the data and a few other tests. We have run everything on our test server and all looks good and ready to go, so this test period should be done pretty quickly. We will then be going through all content blocks, FAQs etc to check they are correct and up to date. Then the domain will be repointed and we should be all good to go. Target is tomorrow for the live launch, but we will let you know as today progresses.
The few things that will needed to be tested are the platform email system, the payment gateway and the ID verification and registration, just make sure all is working as it should.
Will be sending out a platform email to all members also.
Regards Ablrate
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