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Post by chris on Jun 9, 2016 6:06:38 GMT
It doesn't matter if your opinion is right or wrong, whether the platform is correct or someone has made a bit of a boo boo. The Q&A is expressly not a place for you to air your opinions or broadcast your thoughts to the other lenders. Clear, concise, constructive, polite, unique, a question, and nothing but a question. Tick all those boxes and the lender team shouldn't have any excuses for removing your post or hide it from the site and if they do then complain to me and I'll personally look into it. So far as it goes that's helpful but it doesn't really fully address the FCA's concerns, which would require investors to be able to share their views on the facts in discussion with other prospective lenders. So Q&A is Q&A only is fine, but there is then a broader discussion need. Which the section here can partly address, aside from unavailability to non-customers doing platform due diligence. Of course some of the issues are tricky, not least because opinions can annoy a prospective borrower and turn them into a former prospective borrower. There are ways to say bargepole territory without quite saying exactly that.  As far as I'm aware the FCA have no issue with our approach. Don't forget we're also removing positive opinion from the Q&A not just negative. The FCA's worries, as I understand them, are around selective censorship in a forum where opinion is allowed to create an overall positive message when real opinion may be mixed. That isn't a problem with our Q&A as it's purely for exploring the loan itself. We have no problem with people asking probing or revealing questions, and if we cannot or do not answer them then readers are left to draw their own conclusions. But in the specific context of performing due diligence I personally feel that this is best accomplished dealing with the facts of the loan instead of lenders having to filter through a list of informed and uninformed opinion trying to decide who knows what they're talking about. If you are unable to do your due diligence through looking at the facts of the loan in question without polarised, and often exaggerated, opinion from others then I would guess the FCA would say the manual investment account is not for you in the first place. The FCA could also interpret more assertive posts, positive or negative, as advice - something we as a platform are not authorised to give nor, I would imagine, are the vast majority of posters on this forum. We may at some point in the future provide discussion forums direct within the site but that's a big change for us to consider with a lot of policy to work through so there's no particular rush to do so. And we'll continue to support this independent forum for as long as we're welcome and it remains constructive to do so.
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shimself
Member of DD Central
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Post by shimself on Jun 9, 2016 12:06:54 GMT
Going back to your earlier analogy Chris, questions make more sense if they have a context. eg - The Credit Report says Royal Blue, but the local newspaper says Navy Blue, and it is a matter of economic fact that Royal blue is more valuable, which is it? That to me is a question I can understand.
Q Is it Navy Blue A Yes seems rather uninformative
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james
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Post by james on Jun 9, 2016 21:38:42 GMT
But in the specific context of performing due diligence I personally feel that this is best accomplished dealing with the facts of the loan instead of lenders having to filter through a list of informed and uninformed opinion trying to decide who knows what they're talking about. Certainly the facts are key but people do have different levels of experience and their opinions and extra research can be useful, as can discussions and debates about things like the relative weightings of various factors. The FCA could also interpret more assertive posts, positive or negative, as advice - something we as a platform are not authorised to give nor, I would imagine, are the vast majority of posters on this forum. s guidance on that subject seems amply clear that ordinary posters here lack remuneration or any business entity operating here for which they are giving their thoughts so posts cannot be " by way of business" and therefore cannot be regarded as being subject to advice regulation by the FCA. The business test is the easiest one that places just about all board discussions anywhere outside FCA's remit. This doesn't apply to employees of P2P firms or loan intermediaries, of course, who in some aspects of their posts might be regarded as posting on behalf of their business.
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Post by chris on Jun 9, 2016 21:50:57 GMT
But in the specific context of performing due diligence I personally feel that this is best accomplished dealing with the facts of the loan instead of lenders having to filter through a list of informed and uninformed opinion trying to decide who knows what they're talking about. Certainly the facts are key but people do have different levels of experience and their opinions and extra research can be useful, as can discussions and debates about things like the relative weightings of various factors. But new lenders have no way to know or filter that nor know who they should or should not take notice of. I love this forum and all its participants but for every insightful post you can highlight there'll be at least one ill informed one where the author is just as sure of themselves. Layer an element of confirmation bias on top and you end up with some very polarised and exaggerated view points on what are often difficult subjects with no black and white answer. If we provide a forum or if a lender finds their way to this independent forum then those discussions can be had. For us the Q&A is not the place for that and will not be operated as such. The rest of your post is really getting beyond my area of expertise so I'll leave that to others to discuss.
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james
Posts: 2,205
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Post by james on Jun 9, 2016 22:34:32 GMT
But new lenders have no way to know or filter that nor know who they should or should not take notice of. I love this forum and all its participants but for every insightful post you can highlight there'll be at least one ill informed one where the author is just as sure of themselves. Layer an element of confirmation bias on top and you end up with some very polarised and exaggerated view points on what are often difficult subjects with no black and white answer. In general that's OK because part of the point about discussion is merely to raise potential issues so that those considering the matter can form a view. I don't think it's particularly problematic that you made an assertion about advice and I then responded with a link to PERG and it's most relevant section. The simple facts of the PERG text and that we haven't seen an effective banning of discussion boards about FCA-related topics in the UK makes the answer fairly obvious in this case. Yet so far as plain Q&A goes, the FCA has expressed concerns about whether information provided to consumers is understandable to the intended audience and in that general area had a discussion paper back in the summer of 2015, Smarter consumer communications. While firms are required by regulation to ensure that the information provided is understandable to the intended audience*, a discussion by other consumers can help to fill in any gaps where a particular platform or answer doesn't sufficiently explain the implications of a purely factual question and answer. While banning a question that provides context might end up breaching the regulatory requirements by stripping required ability for the audience to be able to understand the answer. *In the discussion paper the FCA says such things as "we require firms to have due regard to the information needs of their customers, and to communicate information in a way that is clear, fair and not misleading" to make this point - with the clear aspect being the most relevant one for my paragraph.
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Post by chris on Jun 10, 2016 6:31:14 GMT
james - the value of the Q&A is diminished if you have to wade through pages of discussion, interpretation, speculation, and opinion to get to the facts. I'm all for discussion, it's partly why I post so much on this forum, but that is a different function to the Q&A. And how do you deal with the irrational? We periodically get negative comments because we refuse to do x, y, or z where our legal and compliance team say we're not allowed to, or one lender or another thinks we should do so and so to recover a loan where that action goes against all the decades of experience we have across our team and is likely to produce a worse outcome for lenders. Then you have things like one star reviews on TrustPilot because a lender is angry at us that they're going to end up with a couple of capital losses despite the fact that their XIRR after those expected losses is still well into double digits. Others viewing their review don't have that contextual information with which to judge. Another more specific example would be registerme who was put off even trying our platform because he'd read some opinion on our section of the forum that our platform was vastly more complex than the others to the point of being really difficult to use. After revisiting that decision much later he found that he didn't agree that the platform was complex and has been investing with us since. All of that has its place but I fundamentally disagree that the Q&A is the place for discussing all of that. This would hide information relevant to lenders underneath a layer of noise that they don't necessarily have the tools to be able to filter out. How would we come up with a suitable moderation policy? It would necessarily involve more grey than the black and white approach we currently take, leaving us more exposed to problems where our moderation is seen as imbalanced. As far as I'm aware our Q&A approach hasn't had any criticism from the FCA and the policy is approved by our chief compliance officer. Our customer services team is headed by a qualified ex-IFA who knows where the line is between advice and presenting information and is used to explaining financial concepts to less sophisticated investors where that is needed.
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