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Post by siamii on Apr 12, 2014 1:57:13 GMT
This story calls for Hercule Poirot. I use my own audit system, which takes information from bank transactions, FC statement, and FC account panel. (The last still needed due to the horribly structured FC statement *cough). I few months ago I ran my first audit, noticed that my FC balance, calculated by FC total, minus accrued interest, minus net earnings is less than the net amount of money transferred to FC, calculated by deposits minus withdrawals, by £0.05 (5 pence). I didn't attribute much significance to it, given their very well developed web app that has absolutely no errors (\sarcasm). Few months pass by, audit still failing... Hmm, finally write email to FC, get reply that tech team is aware of it and will fix it in two weeks. Moreover, I am not alone, other investor accounts are also affected. No explanation as to why the account doesn't reconcile in the first place. I ask for explanation, "ahmmm, we have no idea, tech team does not know". Isn't that great  ) Me thinks lucky they are regulated by the FCA (sort of). I can't wait what will happen when the two weeks is up. If there is anyone out there who also audits their own investments, let me know what you have found. As an avid movie fan, the first thing I think of is naturally Office Space. For those interested, it involves the infamous Salami technique, which is of course just a legend  www.snopes.com/business/bank/salami.asp |
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Post by aloanatlast on Apr 12, 2014 6:54:49 GMT
I get occasional temporary discrepancies of a few quid that may last for a few hours. I guess this is because "Lent", which is actually the total of principals outstanding, is decremented when a payment status changes to "paid", but the cash may not wind its way through to my cash account until later.
On the whole though the numbers you mention do match exactly for me.
My guess would be that an ad-hoc recovery payment may have appeared in your net earnings but not in your cash. If it's not in your transaction statement either, your audit system wouldn't know it was supposed to have been made.
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blender
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Post by blender on Apr 12, 2014 7:08:42 GMT
Thanks, Siamii, for alerting us to this. I do not audit my account, it takes too long to manage an FC account without having to do that, but it is good that some lenders do. My feeling is that with FC the conspiracy theory is not the one to go for, but the other one. I read your post as very comforting that it is only 5p out and hope that mine is only 5p out. Now that the problem has been exposed, and FC have (allegedly) admitted the discrepancy and are unable to explain it, you can perhaps look forward to an ex-gratia payment of 5p and FC might anticipate a little extra work in getting their systems and accounts through a formal audit. They might call for Hercule Poirot, but actually get Captain Hastings.
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Post by aloanatlast on Apr 12, 2014 7:22:50 GMT
If you only deposit and withdraw in round numbers, this is an easy one to check on the Summary page. Subtract "Accrued interest" from "Funding Circle total", and what's left should be "Net earnings" plus a big round number representing net investment. They don't keep track of the big round number for you anywhere, but so long as it is a round number, the odd pounds and pence should match.
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maxmarengo
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Post by maxmarengo on Apr 12, 2014 7:51:55 GMT
I do run an audit of my FC transactions every week (takes about 15 minutes) and have never noticed this problem.
I have, however, noticed the issue that the different data that FC presents are not always updated and there is no warning of any issues, so you can easily waste half an hour trying to find where the problem is only to discover a delay in an overnight process.
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maxmarengo
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Post by maxmarengo on Apr 12, 2014 8:04:09 GMT
On the salami principle (I tend to think of the Superman movie) if a company took 5p from every one of 100,000 investors, they would have £5,000. But this quite high risk - it only takes one of those 100,000 investors to spot what is going on, as you've proved.
Much more money is available within the (somewhat flexible) bounds of the law!
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Post by siamii on May 9, 2014 17:07:39 GMT
Poirot (and Hastings) have been busy in the past month. Mystery one is solved, namely "what will happen when the two weeks is up" - the timescale FC said it would take to fix this issue. The answer is... drumroll... Nothing. So this reconciliation bug is still affecting accounts, including mine. Dismayed, I wrote another email to FC, no answer for a week, finally today the email thread turned bold again.. new message! Polite lady states that the official answer as to why accounts do not reconcile is due to a Rounding Error (!) when loan parts are bought and sold. In addition, fixing it is Not a high priority for the tech team at the moment, so no further time scale was given. Hmmm, the mystery deepens, and my pepperoni pizza smells delicious in the oven To answer a few of the comments. I noticed this discrepancy many months ago first. I do not rely only on FC statement directly for my audit, but also use bank transaction data from my bank. In my case the net investment does not match the actual net investment. Of course, only some investors are affected, not all. In the salami principle, it only takes one investor to spot what's going on, but how many bother with 5p? If it weren't for my OCD, probably I wouldn't either. Plus it's always a "rogue employee" or "software error" rather than the company itself. Even if it's only £5k, who doesn't want some extra cash? Now I still give FC the benefit of the doubt, and contrary to the trend here, in fact I have been increasing my deposits. After all, they have a nice company going, but rounding is something I would expect a financial institution in the UK regulated by FCA to get right in around 4 years they have been in business. In addition, if it's a systematical error then why are only certain investors affected; there's plenty of trading going on in the secondary market. Who would have thought that HSBC was smuggling drug and terrorist money and credit agencies willfully rated junk CDOs AAA. There are publicly available emails on the net showing that they were aware what they were doing. Yet this didn't stop them getting billions of pounds of bailouts and enormous bonuses thereafter. So FC, you still have my trust and I love you. Also, I find it cute that you position yourself so much against the banks (bastards . Even though you've been growing really fast, please for god's sake, get your sit together, after all it's the savings of thousands of normal people we're talking about.
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mikeb
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Post by mikeb on May 9, 2014 17:27:52 GMT
... why accounts do not reconcile is due to a Rounding Error (!) A rounding error is also the official reason why a recent loan that went belly up from the word go, was "refunded in full" [*] by FC, and yet, some lenders have not received their full bids back. These rounding errors are a bit pervasive, aren't they? [*] Where's Martin Lewis with his "IN FULL" placards when you need him?
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www.snopes.com/business/bank/salami.asp
