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Post by fundingsecure on Apr 17, 2014 14:01:58 GMT
Hi,
Some of you may have received an email from FS with an attached Tax statement. Our apologies, this was a test message which was accidentally sent out to savers. Your actual tax statements will be arriving shortly.
Kind Regards
Noman
FundingSecure
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debeast
(o)(o)
Posts: 238 
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Post by debeast on Apr 17, 2014 14:15:15 GMT
You might want to change the temp data next time apparently Nigel owns a few web domains!
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Post by davee39 on Apr 17, 2014 14:24:38 GMT
I complained before coming here.
Funding Insecure!
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Post by elljay on Apr 17, 2014 17:09:30 GMT
Oh dear. A couple of brownie points salvaged by posting before anyone else mentioned it, but, yes, not impressed. I guess we've just about got time to get an Easter card in the post to Nigel..!  |
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ramblin rose
Member of DD Central
“Some people grumble that roses have thorns; I am grateful that thorns have roses.” — Alphonse Karr
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Post by ramblin rose on Apr 17, 2014 18:05:23 GMT
In case anyone like me has been pulling their hair out trying to reconcile this statement with things as stated in their on-line account, please note the following, which in my case makes everything reconcile correctly:
1) The up-front interest received from FS to cover the longer than anticipated drawdown of the fine art loan over Christmas appears in the on-line account as a deposit, and isn't included in the interest total, whereas in the tax statement it is correctly counted as interest.
2) The returns declared in the Completed Loans page against loans up to and including March assumed a fee would be paid, which wasn't - so divide the stated return by 85 and then multiply by 100 to get your actual interest returned. Those for April (and I had one loan paid back on 2nd April, before the end of the tax year) don't assume the fee and so are correct as they stand.
For the attention of FS: The confusion caused by point 2 above could ALMOST be forgivable, if only you could get the lists of loans (both active and closed) listed in date order. It's a nightmare as it stands trying to keep track on where loans are up to, and when interest got paid, because they are all jumbled up in no logical order - 2 tranches of the same loan appear at totally different points in the list in many cases (but not always).
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mikes1531
Member of DD Central
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Post by mikes1531 on Apr 17, 2014 20:21:40 GMT
For the attention of FS: The confusion caused by point 2 above could ALMOST be forgivable, if only you could get the lists of loans (both active and closed) listed in date order. It's a nightmare as it stands trying to keep track on where loans are up to, and when interest got paid, because they are all jumbled up in no logical order - 2 tranches of the same loan appear at totally different points in the list in many cases (but not always). While putting the lists in date order would be very helpful, that wouldn't be nearly good enough. The bit of info that's missing -- and which is critically important -- is the DATE! For the entries on the list of Completed Investments, we need to know when the loan was paid off -- and therefore when the income was received. Without that, it's impossible to know which tax year an entry belongs to. It data provided also requires a calculation to determine whether or not the 15% fee adjustment that shouldn't be there actually is there, but hopefully that issue won't be a concern in the future. Could fundingsecure therefore please acknowledge this shortcoming and indicate when we might expect to see the updates to make this critical data available? And while FS are fixing that, it would be extremely useful if they could fix the bug whereby a loan I have that's about three weeks overdue is showing it has 19 Days Remaining. (That number counted down to zero, and now is counting up!) I'd also find it useful if the data provided for active loans would include the loan's maturity date. As for reconciling my statement with what I see in my account online... The good news is that, thanks to the tips from ramblin rose, I can work out which numbers, when adjusted for the phantom 15% fee, probably were aggregated to produce the income shown on my tax statement. The bad news is that, without the necessary date info, I can't tell whether or not the total for the tax year just finished is correct. I also can't work out how the interest shown for one of my loans was calculated. I lent £240 for 33 days at 13%. Using the technique that works for other loans I have made, I expected the Return shown to be £2.40 (= £240 x 13% x 33/365 - 15%). In fact, FS say my Return was £2.45. Despite being pleased that FS have credited my account with 5p more than I thought they should, I'd much rather that I could understand the basis of my returns. Does anyone else -- including fundingsecure -- have any ideas where the £2.45 could have come from?
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ramblin rose
Member of DD Central
“Some people grumble that roses have thorns; I am grateful that thorns have roses.” — Alphonse Karr
Posts: 1,370
Likes: 857
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Post by ramblin rose on Apr 18, 2014 9:34:47 GMT
For the attention of FS: The confusion caused by point 2 above could ALMOST be forgivable, if only you could get the lists of loans (both active and closed) listed in date order. It's a nightmare as it stands trying to keep track on where loans are up to, and when interest got paid, because they are all jumbled up in no logical order - 2 tranches of the same loan appear at totally different points in the list in many cases (but not always). While putting the lists in date order would be very helpful, that wouldn't be nearly good enough. The bit of info that's missing -- and which is critically important -- is the DATE! For the entries on the list of Completed Investments, we need to know when the loan was paid off -- and therefore when the income was received. Without that, it's impossible to know which tax year an entry belongs to. It data provided also requires a calculation to determine whether or not the 15% fee adjustment that shouldn't be there actually is there, but hopefully that issue won't be a concern in the future. Could fundingsecure therefore please acknowledge this shortcoming and indicate when we might expect to see the updates to make this critical data available? And while FS are fixing that, it would be extremely useful if they could fix the bug whereby a loan I have that's about three weeks overdue is showing it has 19 Days Remaining. (That number counted down to zero, and now is counting up!) I'd also find it useful if the data provided for active loans would include the loan's maturity date. As for reconciling my statement with what I see in my account online... The good news is that, thanks to the tips from ramblin rose, I can work out which numbers, when adjusted for the phantom 15% fee, probably were aggregated to produce the income shown on my tax statement. The bad news is that, without the necessary date info, I can't tell whether or not the total for the tax year just finished is correct. I also can't work out how the interest shown for one of my loans was calculated. I lent £240 for 33 days at 13%. Using the technique that works for other loans I have made, I expected the Return shown to be £2.40 (= £240 x 13% x 33/365 - 15%). In fact, FS say my Return was £2.45. Despite being pleased that FS have credited my account with 5p more than I thought they should, I'd much rather that I could understand the basis of my returns. Does anyone else -- including fundingsecure -- have any ideas where the £2.45 could have come from? I absolutely agree with you Mike on everything. Yesterday evening I was so exasperated with the whole thing I thought it best to keep my post to a minimum - I was in danger of major 'rant mode' which I decided wouldn't be helpful overall  . Yes, absolutely date required - I had to go through all my 'Loan Completed' messages and allocate them, on paper, to a month (and in the case of April, also a day) in order to then go on and work out what was what. The apparently randomly generated loan numbers don't even give a slight clue to help you along the way. Like you I think I have at least one loan where the interest doesn't quite match expectation for the number of days exactly; I didn't bother doing that calculation for all of them, since on the whole they matched exactly, and just made sure that what FS think I had in the last tax year is what I think I had and what is in the account.
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mikes1531
Member of DD Central
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Post by mikes1531 on Apr 18, 2014 13:13:35 GMT
I also can't work out how the interest shown for one of my loans was calculated. I lent £240 for 33 days at 13%. Using the technique that works for other loans I have made, I expected the Return shown to be £2.40 (= £240 x 13% x 33/365 - 15%). In fact, FS say my Return was £2.45. Despite being pleased that FS have credited my account with 5p more than I thought they should, I'd much rather that I could understand the basis of my returns. Does anyone else -- including fundingsecure -- have any ideas where the £2.45 could have come from? Like you I think I have at least one loan where the interest doesn't quite match expectation for the number of days exactly; I didn't bother doing that calculation for all of them, since on the whole they matched exactly, and just made sure that what FS think I had in the last tax year is what I think I had and what is in the account. There are two issues. The one that prompted this thread was the tax statement, with the issue being whether the tax statement is consistent with the earnings we've had. So far, nobody has found anything that isn't consistent, and that's good news. The other issue is whether the amounts we're earning are consistent with what we're being told we're earning, and that's where I'm slightly uncomfortable with the inability of my calculations to match the amounts FS has credited to my account. As an example, if I lend £200 for six months at 13%, I'd expect to earn £13 of interest. If it turns out that I'm credited with only £10, then there's an issue even if my tax statement is consistent and reports £10 of earnings to declare. In the specific example I quoted previously, the discrepancy is only 5p, and it's in my favour. But the fact is that I can't work out where FS's number came from, and that plants a seed of doubt as to whether FS are doing the calculation the way I'd expect. (I won't suggest they're wrong, because it might me me that's wrong.) So I'd really like fundingsecure to explain what I'm doing wrong and how they calculated their number. If we can't reproduce FS's calculations consistently, then we'd need to check every number they produce in order to see if they're doing what it says on the tin. And we shouldn't have to do that!
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Post by fundingsecure on Apr 18, 2014 14:06:12 GMT
mikes1531
The issue relates to the fact that we actually calculate using both the time and date to get the exact interest. In this case the number of days is (roughly) 33.7, although the display only shows (truncated) whole number of days. So the actual amount of interest paid to you was £2.88 - and the display is showing this less the 15% commission = £2.45. Hopefully that explains the apparent discrepancy. We are reviewing this policy currently to avoid further confusion.
On the issue of displaying the interest less commission, even though none has been taken, (As ramblin rose kindly explained above) we hope to have the figures (correctly) showing no commission very shortly, but this has not affected the actual amount paid, nor the total summary, both of which are correct.
Kind Regards
FundingSecure
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ramblin rose
Member of DD Central
“Some people grumble that roses have thorns; I am grateful that thorns have roses.” — Alphonse Karr
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Post by ramblin rose on Apr 18, 2014 15:11:23 GMT
mikes1531 The issue relates to the fact that we actually calculate using both the time and date to get the exact interest. In this case the number of days is (roughly) 33.7, although the display only shows (truncated) whole number of days. So the actual amount of interest paid to you was £2.88 - and the display is showing this less the 15% commission = £2.45. Hopefully that explains the apparent discrepancy. We are reviewing this policy currently to avoid further confusion. You can leave the calculation exactly as it is if it's nice and precise and correct. All that needs to happen is you supply the date and time of the loan start and the date and time of the loan end, and put some statement somewhere sensible and appropriate on the site that tells us how the calculation is done. I would certainly be happy with that.
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mikes1531
Member of DD Central
Posts: 6,453
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Post by mikes1531 on Apr 21, 2014 1:18:23 GMT
mikes1531 The issue relates to the fact that we actually calculate using both the time and date to get the exact interest. In this case the number of days is (roughly) 33.7, although the display only shows (truncated) whole number of days. So the actual amount of interest paid to you was £2.88 - and the display is showing this less the 15% commission = £2.45. Hopefully that explains the apparent discrepancy. We are reviewing this policy currently to avoid further confusion. You can leave the calculation exactly as it is if it's nice and precise and correct. All that needs to happen is you supply the date and time of the loan start and the date and time of the loan end, and put some statement somewhere sensible and appropriate on the site that tells us how the calculation is done. I would certainly be happy with that. That seems a reasonable approach to me too.
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. Yes, absolutely date required - I had to go through all my 'Loan Completed' messages and allocate them, on paper, to a month (and in the case of April, also a day) in order to then go on and work out what was what. The apparently randomly generated loan numbers don't even give a slight clue to help you along the way.