New loans

Thanks for the clarification Chris. I fully agree with and understand this approach on pre-bids.

We're actually in a tricky situation, partly of our own making.  On the one hand we have lenders saying they don't want to participate too much in the primary markets, they just want to buy on the aftermarket with the underwriter taking the hit on the drawdown times.  On the other hand some of our loans are heavily oversubscribed and people can't get the loan units they want.  Big lenders want to be able to quickly and reliably invest large amounts, little lenders don't want to be excluded, and we are doing all we can to keep everyone happy.

We have come up with a series of arbitrary rules to try and manage this and make sure that people don't miss out but they will not work in every situation and sometimes people will lose out.  It is also worth noting that this auction is rather special in the size of the change in loan size.  It's gone from requiring underwriting, where we're having to try and encourage people to bid and pay underwriters to pick up the slack, to being oversubscribed.

If you're referring to the fact that the loan appears oversubscribed with pre-bids it's important to remember that not all of those pre-bids will turn into actual bids.  The last time I checked, about £20k of the pre-bids weren't funded.  There's still time for lenders to put funds into their accounts to cover those pre-bids, but there's also still time for lenders to delete pre-bids.  So it's not definite that a pre-bid placed now would miss out on the auction.  Likely, perhaps, but not for sure.

We'll find out in about half an hour.

Perhaps it wasn't an issue in this case because of all the info that was available before, but now I'm confused about the AC.  What exactly is the AC position on auction timing relative to the release of the full credit report.  Is it 48 hours?  (I thought that's what Andrew said on another occasion, but perhaps I'm mis-remembering.)  Is it 24 hours?  Is it a variable amount depending on the circumstances?

In this case, I see no reason at all to rush the auction.  The borrower needs to settle their purchase by 27/Feb, so the auctuon needs to finish by then, but that's all.  It seems rather obvious that there were/are enough pre-bids to fund the loan and even if there weren't quite enough when the auction started I'd still expect it to be funded completely in a few hours or less.  Even in the 'disaster' case of the lenders deciding to pull their pre-bids and not bid once the auction is open, underwriters have been engaged -- and, as I understand it, will earn at least some of their fees even if their money isn't required at all -- so the loan definitely will be funded.  As a result, the borrower can proceed with the purchase knowing that they have the financing they need.

I expect that selling loan parts in this auction wouldn't be a problem in the Aftermarket, so that does help.  But it doesn't help the 'dead' money situation where lenders' funds don't start earning interest until drawdown.  And the lenders affected might wish to use any extra money that ends up being tied up in LtL7 available to bid in other auctions that might come along before LtL7 is drawn down and they can sell off their loan parts.

The real issue is having clear communications.  In general, AC is doing well in this regard, but sometimes -- and this is one of those -- the messages are come through a bit later than is desirable.

mikeb - another developer looks after the email notifications (yup, I'm passing the buck).  I'll get him to look into it tomorrow.

mrclondon - that is quite likely.

Lessons have been learned?  The lesson being if person A sets it up, then person B does the same and they compare or at least person B checks it.