Hurry - Only £584,818.43 left

It says 1 day now!!

Really can't decide what to do with this one.  I was one of the people who indicated a willingness to invest a significant sum, with certain caveats, one of which was relating to the interest rate.  10% just doesn't interest (sic!) me enough to make it such an obvious choice.  Even with a 20% LTV this one strikes me as fairly risky, and unlike other similar platforms FS aren't saying they would cover our losses if it all turns bad.  On the other hand, the main competitor with better returns has no new loans available to me at the moment (I already re-invested a significant sum in the renewing loan that's available).  So, what to do?  Think I'll just sit on my hands for a while longer.

'Tis a dilemma.  With such a low LTV, I would think that the risk of the security being insufficient is pretty minimal.  I see two other risks, however, that do concern me... 

• If it turns out that the security has to be sold to recover the principal, I'd expect that to be a protracted process because of the specialised nature of the books.  That market has to be pretty 'thin'.  And while I accept that the LTV is so low that a sale could be organised very quickly and still achieve the necessary amount, rushing to auction could upset the borrower to the point that they sue FS for 'dumping' the books.  FS may have all the law on their side, but the amount at stake is huge, and so is the potential upset to the borrower.  FS being in one country and the security being in another is bound to complicate things as well.
  
• Will FS be able to fund the loan?  If I make a bid tomorrow, how long might it be before I start earning interest?  A significant 'dead' period on a short loan would cause my actual return to be well below the nominal 10% rate.

I do hope FS's confidence is not misplaced, as it would be very good for the platform if the loan proceeded.

I can understand that smaller lenders might want to wait until they're convinced the loan is going to happen, but larger lenders have been given the opportunity to shadow bid. That gives them the opportunity to guarantee their participation in the loan but not to have to come up with the cash until the loan is completely funded and therefore is sure to proceed. Having removed the 'dead' money risk, I would have thought that if the large lenders who said last month that they would invest in such a loan if it were offered really were serious then they would have placed shadow bids by now.

At this point I see just four bids that are large enough to be shadow bids -- three at £10k, and and one at £25k.  At the moment, we're down to one day remaining, the loan is less than 13% funded, and that's a bit concerning.  Where is the other £523k going to come from?

If I'm not allowed to place a shadow bid because I'm not prepared to put £10k into this loan, then I'm going to hold off bidding until I'm convinced that this loan really will happen.

PS.  In case people haven't been watching the list of lenders carefully, the lender offering £25k has a userID that happens to match the name of one of FS's co-founders.  There's no guarantee, of course, that that's who the lender really is, but it does seem quite possible.  If that's the case, then uptake of this loan from 'ordinary' FS lenders is even shorter of the amount required than might appear at first glance.

Interest Rate now raised to 13%.

Now only needs 500k min. and up to 463k.

It is nice to see the big loans on FS .
But i am still worried by the bugs in the website that have been there since the beginning.
Went to go add a few more pennies to this one and i was still logged in from yesterday.
ah well