New ZOPA product...

And on Zopa Plus the increased risk taken must be allowing you to sell loans as well..

Zopa Classic (4-5%) - Safeguard lending 1-5 year term mixed.
Zopa Access (3-4%) - Safeguard lending 1-5 year term mixed with fee free easy access

Zopa must be really stupid. Rhydian and Co must be smirking in their coffees.

Classic - mix the loans so we can no longer even get the current 5% for 5yr. Presumably we get something in between 4% and 5%. 1% exit fee if we want to cash some or all of it.
Access - exactly the same, but we pay the 1% exit fee on all of our investment (via a 1% less interest rate) whether or not we cash in all or part or none of it.

I now have a very moderate four figure sum still on loan (was over £25K) since I stopped investing in 2013 (and started withdrawing repayments) when "projected" 5 year rates of 5% were actually giving me 3.8% over six weeks. (Before rate promise).

Zopa has done everything possible to dissuade me from ever putting money in again.

I note that Ratesetter now offers 3-4% on its monthly safeguarded market with zero exit fees. In the last few minutes 4% has been matching. 6.6% has been matching on the 5 year "safeguarded" market this morning.

Not sure how the haircut will be applied if rates have risen above those currently on offer, but ignoring this, an investor would be indifferent to instant access of longer loans and monthly loans. Indeed as the dead time between loans may well be shorter (or are you assuming MR for the RS monthly market?), so a lower average rate would give the same return. I see this as an effective product for those who expect to use a substantial portion of their funds at short notice (although they should ideally have a back up plan due to the residual risk) ie if the expected average investment period < 1 year the investor is better off.

So it is down to the haircut. I haven't checked for a while, but on SG, the only loans that needed to be discounted when it was first introduced were those below the rate that any loans were made in that market. This means the vast majority could be sold at no additional cost to the 1%. However, as any such loans were left unsold, such a sale would have cut the investors average returns!

As for the Plus alternative, clearly aimed at those cautious investors who won't invest with an unproven manager. Z is the only P2P with experience of a downturn and has an enviable record on defaults ever since. They have also stuck to genuine P2P which may appeal to some as seen on the RS thread on their PF about concerns re property loans. 

I can see the Zopa Access account being quite popular with new, to P2P, ISA investors seeing it as an instant access account with no exit fees.

The problem will occur when they draw on that perceived instant access and find either:

1) A discount being applied to sell their loans, due to rates rising.  (at some point rates will rise, indeed due to P2P ISA's they may fall and then recover to current rates)

and or,

2) A liquidity problem (too many sellers and not enough buyers) meaning they cannot sell quickly.

Eventually a Lender will experience (1) and/ or (2) and at that point the Access Account may encounter some adverse publicity, especially from "newbie" lenders who considered it to be fee free instant access.

In summary I feel the Access account could well be a great initial idea which will be v popular with new lenders, but one that could over the next 12 months get some bad PR...Not helped by the similarity of the name Zopa Access and instant access savings accounts.

I suspect most or at least many of the newbie ISA investors will be sucked in by Zopa Access's 3-4 % rate v an instant access ISA thinking they can access their monies immediately like the instant access account without any deduction (no fee).

When they see either:

1) A delay in being paid out , it does not have to be a freeze up, just a 3-4 days or weeks delay they will complain to the FCA since that is not instant. And they needed the money instantly, since they thought it was instant "access".

2) Due to the rates increasing they get a discount deduction. Probably only 0.5% but again off to the FCA re. It states on fee access.

I am envisaging a miss selling complaint and a statement that the Terms & Conditions are not clear. And at least to me the current Blog post and Q&A rules are far from clear and transparent. Yes having been with ZOPA for 4 years I pretty much get it, but is that enough for a ISA registered provider ?

I would hope (and suggest to ZOPA) that when the product is formally rolled out each product has a clear and concise set of T&C's with a summary on such issues. i.e. A Health warning as to what fee free Access means and a statement that it is not instant access and a discount (which some may see as a fee) will sometimes be applicable. 

That would solve the instant access issue, but it probably wouldn't solve the 'market adjustment' issue.

That's 1% of interest vs 1% of capital in loans where they say that the expected natural term is in the 18 months or so range.

Interesting that they don't mention the potential to lose capital when selling if the market rates at time of sale are higher than the market rates at time of acquisition. Hopefully they didn't just issue a series of misleading financial promotions that fail to mention potentially the largest cost of selling, and which might apply to the product which they are implying has no cost to exit.