New Ts & Cs

So we are encouraged to ring the borrower ourselves and collect our own information then?? 8>.

[Mod hat off]

Indeed. Reading this, I am ever more thankful that I sprinted for the exit on 1st January. Happily I've now just £100 of my original stake money still to withdraw; anything I manage to get back beyond this (and it won't be much) will be a welcome and unexpected bonus. IMO, either ReBS needs to transition towards the AC model (asset-backed SME lending) or else I fear for its future, as I do for the other small unsecured SME lending platforms. Only with the market scale and SM liquidity of Foetid Corpses can one play the "numbers game" and have any confidence that returns from performing loans will outweigh the inevitable losses that unsecured SME lending entails.

Firstly we are not unique in having T&C's like this for example:

FC:
Clauses 1.2 , 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6

Assetz:
“Whilst Assetz SME Capital offers support to the Lending Members by way of the provision of credit reports as part of the lending process and various manual and automatic loan selection facilities, no charge is payable by the Lending Members for these services and they are offered without obligation or liability on the part of Assetz SME Capital. The Assetz Capital Companies accept no responsibility and disclaim all liability for any information about a Borrower made available to Lending Members through the Website or otherwise.”
Clauses 17.1, 17.2, 17.3

Secondly:
As mentioned elsewhere on this forum and on our own site, all our legal documents, including Terms and Conditions, Loan agreements and security documents are reviewed twice a year and updated in line with regulatory, industry and legal changes that have come into force. We also take the opportunity during these reviews to try and incorporate suggestions and changes proposed by users of the platform, most of which are received from investors.

The clauses that you have pointed out in your post, brianlom1 , were part of our original terms and conditions on the site, and these have not undergone any recent changes. Clauses similar to these can be found on almost every other p2p platform and are regarded as best practice. I’d like to take the opportunity to explain why these clauses are as they are.

6.2.1 Providing such advice is a regulated activity, one for which we do not have regulatory permissions. P2P platforms are not able to provide advice on investment or debt.
6.2.2 We provide an indicative A-C rating, however this is only intended to be informative, and investors must make their own lending decisions, as is the nature of P2P.
6.2.3 We use third party credit checking agencies to inform the A-C rating, we cannot be responsible for the information that they report. We take care to use only reputable providers so as to reduce any risk.
6.3 P2P platforms operate under Article 36H, and are not a managed fund or investment advisor. Lending is done at the decision of the lender. The platform allows lenders to choose to whom they want to lend and when they want to lend and allows them to set risk adjusted rates and determine the amount they would like to lend on each loan.
6.4 We take steps to verify the information provided by the borrowers during the application processes and where information is not forthcoming or inconclusive, applications will, and have been rejected. We cannot ever be 100% sure that what we are being told by the borrower is true and accurate, but take reasonable steps to verify all information where possible.
6.5 SME’s are affected by a number or factors that affect their ability to make repayments. We mitigate the risk of businesses not repaying by taking some form of security on each and every loan so that we may have an avenue to get past the limited liability nature of the businesses to try and secure payment. We cannot guarantee borrowers will make repayments as we unfortunately cannot control the factors that impact upon them.

Thirdly:
There was a glitch on the site which prevented users that do not accept the terms form accessing their dashboards, this is to be fixed shortly and we can only apologise for this oversite.

Fourthly:
We have taken care to listen to the suggestions of lenders and incorporate these into the new terms and loan agreements. Lenders wishes were the main influence for the increased powers in clause 8 of the loan agreement. This clause arguably giving us a higher degree of assertion to act in the interest of lenders where the situation may call for it, than any other platform.

We have sought to openly inform and educate lenders of the new changes and hope that this will largely be well received.  We have also written a blog post about the changes:
www.rebuildingsociety.com/updated-loan-conditions-and-terms-and-conditions/

Regards
Rebs

Quick update:

ReBS website has been updated, it now offers the option to decline Ts & Cs (which I understand means I can access my account but I cannot make new investments)   :-)

Doesn't it constrain the upper limit of the rates you can bid at, or am I confusing them with some other places?