Plenty for sale in SM ?

There's still quite a few buy orders in place though.  I've sold several loans this morning.

But if its underwriters trying to free up cash for new loans in the upcomming list and they cant how is ac going to underwrite the future loans list the qaa is way to small.I guess they may have to send a bigger proportion to the institutions in future but this is all speculation on my part.

You're assuming no growth in either the lender base or the funds existing lenders have to deploy over time, plus we're currently using only a fraction of our underwriter's stated capacity.  We've got several major marketing campaigns kicking off over the coming weeks and months to drive up lender numbers, plans for new investment accounts, a ISA solution to launch, plus institutional investors hungry for more if retail doesn't grow at the rate we need.

All platforms are a seesaw trying to balance lender and borrower demand, and it's rare for any platform to be perfectly balanced for any length of time.  A couple of months ago lender demand was outstripping borrower demand, that's now flipped after successful changes to our origination whilst we mobilise our plans for increasing lender demand.  Then it'll no doubt flip again and people will grumble about lack of investment opportunities.

In your opinion.  I have a report tracking lender activity and funds deposited and withdrawn over the past 20 weeks, and this was the busiest week in that period with the greatest inflow of lender deposits by retail investors and that's before our marketing ramps up.  Underwriters are also some of our largest lenders in terms of the amount they want to hold long term.  They don't always want to sell out of a loan otherwise we wouldn't have created the compulsory sale system for them.

If the loans we have on offer don't match your assessment of risk vs return then don't invest.  If too many lenders agree with you then we'll have to rethink our approach, but that currently isn't the case.

I'd be surprised if you felt one of the big three were offering better returns than us, so I presume you're referring to another platform like MT or SS?  What is it you'd like to see from us?

If I had a pound for every time somebody from AC has said that I could probably afford to pay off all my suspended loans. Granny, suck and eggs spring to mind.

The SM offerings for the loans I referred to must be almost wholly from the underwriting teams. If you have record income and still can't shift them then what will things be like when income returns to normal (incidentally would you like to confirm what percentage of the record income went in the QAA and what percentage was used to buy loans on the SMS?).

What would I like to see? How about bridging loans at the same rate as SS, or the choice of SME loans and the rates that TC have to offer. Or how about a loan to a successful expanding business, rather than to bail out a previous business failure. Definitely no restaurants or scrap metal dealers, and nothing secured against aboriginal paintings.

 

I have been in P2P for around a year, done a huge amount of research and and have invested in 8 differnt platforms with a significant total sum now invested. I am struggling to understand why AC is taking so much heat from a number of forum members recently on this thread and a few others. Let me explain my views and then hopefully you can help me learn some more about P2P investing.

It seems that most of the criticism of AC recently has been about rates....not as good as MT/SS or arguments of now pricing for liquidity not risk etc. and I don't fully understand why, taken in the wider view of the P2P market, some of you now find AC so uncompetitve.

My abridged view of the market risk vs. rates is this, I am focused on asset-backed lending only so no FC SME:

In the 4-6% range you have Zopa and RS etc with predominantly retail lending and PFs (if you ignore Z+ with it's mix of unsecured auto-allocated loans) but you also have the likes of secured property backed BTL/Property specialists Landbay and also Wellesley offering 4.25% to upwards of 5%. This I believe to be low risk P2P with proportionally lower returns. I expect the majority of P2P investors have some of their portfolio in these types of platforms.

At the higher end of the returns scale there are the likes of MT,SS,TC,ALB etc offering around 12% and including pawn-style lending against assets like cars and jewellery, shipping containers, planes etc but also SME and property development loans, bridge loans etc etc. I have researched most of these other platforms and overall I think I understand why the rates are what they are, the risks are in my view generally higher but, more importantly for me, my ability go judge the risks is much lower due to both the information provided by the platform and the markets they are lending to. I feel more uncomfortable judging risk when if comes to the likes of works of art, exotic cars, shipping containers, planes or complex property development loans. I feel that these platforms are for the seriously experienced and/or less risk averse investors or, perhaps maybe, I have misjudged some of them.

So that brings me to AC. GBBA and GEIA at 7% I think competes very well with other low-risk, PF protected, asset-backed easy to manage accounts and with the MLIA I am currently achieving 9.5% average in the MLIA well diversified with everything from 7%BTL loans & renewables to SMEs at 10%+. The QAA is an added bonus that helps get a return on idle money and increase overall return. Generally I feel very comfortable with how AC go about their business and the information provided to investors and on balance feel it offers a fair risk/return compared to the market highs and lows that are out there. I do accept that there are loans on AC, as most platforms, that some investors won't want to invest in.

My view on the 12% rates in SS, MT etc is that it cannot be sustainable and/or must come at the cost of higher risk. With the likes of FC drving down borrowing costs for P2P generally (with rock bottom unsecured SME lending and high LT(GD)V development loans and bridge loans are going out at 8% pretty much daily) platforms that try and compete at the higher rates are going to have to take bigger and bigger risks to keep their rate-hungry investors happy. If Landbay can do BTL for under 5% and be growing very very fast then much higher rates than this must surely either be justified by much higher risk or they are simply unsustainable. It seems that BTL at 7% on AC today is seen by some as not very attractive even though older 7%BTL loans on AC have been pretty much fully subscribed since I joined.

I understand there a lots of far more experienced investors out there than me and perhaps I am missing something that would aid my understanding and change my future platform choices so I would really would appreciate some experienced investors views on this.