The Ideas Thread

Your proposals are very welcome.  Thank you.

On the subject of better communications, may I make a few suggestions which hopefully will be useful and will not take too much extra effort:

1.  When your Non-Exec Directors and your Legal Officer make their coming review, could they please reconsider the formal status of your more 'distressed' loans. 
I recently took the time to examine all the loans accessible on the website, and found quite a few which show many or all the signs of a defaulted loan, but whose status has NOT been set to "Default - under enforcement".  I mentioned some of them in another thread (Defaults, Bad debt etc) on this board. 
To take a specific example (perhaps the most egregious) :  loan application #126 to E***********L H****** S******* L*****D seems to be irredeemably distressed, yet has not been defaulted.  There are others too which merit consideration.
Of course, there may be technical reasons why this, and other loans, have not been defaulted - but if there are, I think some explanation is due to lenders and a clearer and more consistent policy promulgated on when loans can be expected to be placed in default.  Without such clarity and consistency, one can only think that ReBS are trying to 'flatter' their default statistics. 
(And, to be clear, I am not talking about loans where the company is still in Administration or have only recently been disolved - where it would be too soon to expect any real idea of the long-term outcome).

2. The government is proposing, with effect from next tax year, to allow bad debts to be offset against interest earned for tax purposes (provided subsequent  recoveries are treated as income).  This is an important concession to P2P lenders who are taxpayers.  It is also proposed that this concession be available for bad debts incurred in the current tax year.  Obviously until these proposals are fixed in law, no platform can act upon them.  But it would be helpful to lenders if you would consider how you might indicate, on a case by case basis, the point in the life of a distressed loan at which ReBS considers that it meets the criteria for a loss to be offset against interest.  The proposed 'journal' seems like an ideal vehicle for such announcements. 

3.  Finally, I think there is a lot of uncertainty among many lenders about the nature and significance of the various types security offered with loans, and what the various legal routes are by which recoveries can be effected against the different types of security.  Would it be possible to offer somewhere on the site a guide to such matters, or at least a glossary for the uninitiated & those of us who are confused about such elementary things as: the difference betweem Administration & Liquidation? what is  CVA? what is Bankruptcy? What is a debenture? How is a personal guarantee enforced? ... etc. etc.

Thanks for conidering these suggestions.