PBL97 - Riviera, London - REPAID

Interesting Google review posted in the last week for H****** R****** M***** & B*******:

It was allocation bottoms up (the loan was for less than 1m).  £300 if my own overview is correct...

That's right (got it wrong in my post... swiftly correct...   )

When the subject is boats, bottom up is bad news! 

I would like to see saving stream doing checks and due diligence on Borrowers and associated companies in addition to due diligence on property valuations and the legal side.

It's all very well to get a professional valuation and get your lawyers to do all the legal work and get the charge registered against the property but if the individual borrower is bent then it is a recipe for problems and perhaps there should be some investigation into the background of Borrowers in addition to checking whether the security is up to the job.

Regardless of the quality of the security offered, if a borrower has a track record of dishonesty or criminality or other adverse or dodgy actions I would suggest that is not a trustworthy person who we should all be getting associated with and it must increase the risk of default.

In terms of people's honesty and reliability and reputation, experience tells most of us that leopards don't very often change their spots.

Yes and that's an important point because sometimes people have the very best motives and intentions but their personal characteristics and abilities make them unable to fulfill them.

When somebody approaches you to go into some sort of deal then you must surely know their name address date of birth and various personal details and these days it is very easy to interrogate somebody's background in terms of company records and criminal records and county court judgements and press reports etc etc. As we know from this forum it is quite easy to find out not very glowing things about certain people and I wonder if saving stream should just do a bit more background on the Borrowers themselves rather than concentrating on the security being offered and the business plan behind the need for the loan.

I'm not saying they don't do that already but if they do it could appear that a few people have slipped through the net who perhaps we would rather not be lending to and this goes for other platforms as well and is a general point and not specific to the Riviera loan in which thread I am writing.

At a time like this when things have slowed a little in terms of investor appetite then I think it is a good time to just be a bit more careful and only bring first-class loans to the investors In order to build up confidence. Probably now is the time when quality is much more important than quantity and even an amber warning light flashing on the dashboard perhaps should be enough to say no to the business, when in the past only a red warning light would have triggered such a reaction.

-34 days is nothing.  If you're investing here you need to be prepared for months of overdues, but you'll probably get the interest in the end.