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Post by ajscotland on Feb 5, 2016 0:46:02 GMT
I am looking for feedback before I take my concerns to the FCA.
My summary statistics shows an account value of 2500 Euro and a cumulative profit of 1850 Euro and a return of 15%. To the uninformed this might look OK.
The reality is that I put in 12000 Euro in Spring 2014 and have been able to remove 11300. I am sitting on at 700 Euro loss of capital. All of my investment are 60 days plus overdue, many a year overdue.
Bondora is different to may UK P2P platforms as it does not show a loss until the end of the recovery process. The net effect is that the Bondora method disguises poor loan performance for a year or more. I am not sure whether UK accountancy prudency principles would permit loans to be shown at full value where there is a material risk that some loans (Spanish and Slovakian) are irrecoverable.
Many other UK P2P platforms show the loss much earlier in line with prudency principles
The Bondora website states "Bondora AS is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) with the reference number 665420". This indicates the FCA approve Bondora is OK for investors many of who will be new to the P2P arena. An FCA licence requires that the way information is presented should not be considered as misleading
I am considering asking the FCA to review whether the method Bondora uses to shows investor information is consistent with FCA requirements. Before I embark on this I would welcome feedback.
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JamesFrance
Member of DD Central
Port Grimaud 1974
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Post by JamesFrance on Feb 5, 2016 9:18:37 GMT
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parisingoc
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Post by parisingoc on Feb 5, 2016 10:39:06 GMT
Before I start - I am no expert and am just repeating points I have seen elsewhere.
I have seen on another P2P forum that the present FCA authorisation (for many P2P lenders) is an interim state to give the organisations time to bring themselves up to the levels required for full authorisation and that this has to happen within a proscribed (2 years I think) timescale from the date of the granting of the interim status.
From this I have come to believe that the authorisation presently granted to Bondora is this interim status. I have no idea what this actually means in terms of the prudential conduct of the organisation concerned, but my gut instinct is that it is not there, but supposedly travelling in the general direction.
I suspect you have a lot of tightly-worded language to negotiate which probably means Bondora can argue their corner by slippery interpretation and still remain on that path to authorisation.
Good luck.
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pikestaff
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Post by pikestaff on Feb 5, 2016 11:28:16 GMT
Bondora do indeed have only interim authorisation. IMO they make a much bigger deal of this than they should - all part of luring investors in. As to whether they will ever be fully authorised, based on what I read on this forum I have my doubts. By all means write to the FCA. I expect they will be accumulating quite a postbag. It's been posted elsewhere that if the FCA see serious problems they have the power to close down any platform. p2pindependentforum.com/post/89782/thread. I'm not sure how that would work (if at all) outside the UK. Perhaps james can tell us.
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james
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Post by james on Feb 5, 2016 11:33:58 GMT
Bondora is different to may UK P2P platforms as it does not show a loss until the end of the recovery process. Do not even think of making that claim to the FCA because it is factually incorrect and may harm the chance of success in an area that does need FCA attention. Bondora shows capital losses as the capital payment would have become due on the normal schedule, not at the time of default as specified int eh loan contracts. The result is that it takes significant time before the effect of the escalating counted defaults becomes greater than the interest income already received. Bondora can also correctly claim that the interest rates are intended to cover the default losses over the whole loan term while defaults happen more often near the start of a loan than near the end, so it is expected that the value of total interest paid minus all capital of defaulted loans would start higher than the end result. But this is all defaulted capital while Bondora only counts the capital that has not yet been paid on the original schedule. You're right about the effect being to misrepresent the likely end result but there are offsetting arguments that Bondora can use and which you must counter in any complaint. For example, Bondora apparently uses in its interest setting methods a recover rate of 70% for Estonian loans and 10% for others, but it doesn't use these in the bad debt reporting, instead doing that not counting until originally due method. Similarly it expects a certain proportion of current or late loans to default but it doesn't use that information in telling investors the state of their accounts either. You are likely to get plentiful help if you seek advice on your proposed complaint because it is likely that most here agree with your overall view and wish you to succeed. Start by reading the past discussions and blog posts which they link to, a lot of the work has already been done for you.
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Post by aemilius on Feb 5, 2016 17:27:46 GMT
In the past I have tried to find in the public registers of the FCA the registration number Bondora mentions. I was not able to find it. The suggestion of Parisingoc might explain why: it is just an interim status. Anyone found the registration on the FCA website?
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pikestaff
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Post by pikestaff on Feb 5, 2016 17:49:38 GMT
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Post by aemilius on Feb 5, 2016 23:10:44 GMT
Thank you for the register link. Many well known UK peer to peer lending platforms still have an interim permission as well, so nothing uncommon with respect to Bondora.
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ders
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Post by ders on Feb 8, 2016 20:00:58 GMT
Honestly speaking - why not ask? you are not willing to ask stop their activities. you are asking to clarify if this is normal.
You can ask if it is normal not to show investors (and as well unprofessional investors newcomers) Default values, but only 'mystical" overdue forgetting about time, about unpaid late fee and interest. Is it normal and how many times to resend debt from stage 4 to stage 1 etc.
just question to clarify
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p2pmaster
investment is life.
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Post by p2pmaster on Aug 26, 2016 11:38:38 GMT
Too late. No longer a part of FCA
From the FT article:
Bondora previously had interim authorisation from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, but Tomberg says they withdrew their application for a full license after the Brexit vote in late June. The FCA register says the company’s interim permission lapsed on July 12, but Bondora’s website — presumably slow to update — still says the company is “authorised and regulated” by the FCA.
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Post by marthaskirta on Aug 26, 2016 13:48:37 GMT
Too late. No longer a part of FCA From the FT article: Bondora previously had interim authorisation from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, but Tomberg says they withdrew their application for a full license after the Brexit vote in late June. The FCA register says the company’s interim permission lapsed on July 12, but Bondora’s website — presumably slow to update — still says the company is “authorised and regulated” by the FCA. Hello. Yes, after the Brexit vote we decided to withdraw our application. Currently we see that the regulatory setup for the UK market is too uncertain to do any specific decisions on moving our headquarter there (this was one of the requirements). The license itself is not required to have for allowing the investors from the UK to invest. If we would ever want to target the UK borrowers then the license is of course necessary. In terms of other older questions that have been raised in this thread - each investor can from his dashboard switch between two return calculations: (1) a current net return model and (2) forward looking model (called yield-to-maturity). Current return model looks at only payments that have occurred in the past (made and missed payments) whilst the forward looking model looks at all historic payments and makes assumptions for future payments from loans that are current and in default. Thank you. Best wishes, Martha
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ders
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Post by ders on Sept 7, 2016 11:17:46 GMT
From my experience - I have seen one p2p site went from UK to Belise after they failed to comply with FCA regulation
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Post by mrclondon on Sept 7, 2016 11:38:29 GMT
From my experience - I have seen one p2p site went from UK to Belise after they failed to comply with FCA regulation Would you like to expand on that comment ? Would you please state both the UK trading name and the Belise (I assume you mean Belize) trading name.
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ders
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Post by ders on Sept 7, 2016 12:12:09 GMT
The real case is www.btcpop.co who was UK company and now is working in Belize.
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Post by mrclondon on Sept 7, 2016 12:53:47 GMT
The real case is www.btcpop.co who was UK company and now is working in Belize. btcpop calls itself "P2P BITCOIN BANKING". At present the FCA does not authorise ANY financial services company based on blockchain technology, although it is researching the area with a view to authorisations in this area in the future news.bitcoin.com/fca-considers-blockchain-approval/It would be impossible for a business based on bitcoins to gain FCA approval at present, and if btcpop is indeed operating out of Belize it will because they would be unable to gain regulatory approval in more conventional locations.
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