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Post by vanessaiman on Mar 3, 2017 12:11:36 GMT
Hi littonowl , Just a bit of clarification on late-payments in case useful. There are two reasons we’d flag a loan in the system: either the borrower misses two interest repayments; or they fail to repay the loan on time. In the majority of cases, a failure to repay the loan on time is due to a sale falling through, or a refinance taking longer than expected. This sometimes occurs when lending money, and shouldn’t be a cause for concern. Octopus Property has a clear process for dealing with missed payments – a process that begins with emails and letters being sent to the borrower and their solicitor, notifying them of our intention to instruct solicitors. Experience shows that most of these loans are resolved with the threat of legal action, without having to escalate further. Please feel free to let me know if you have any further questions. Best, Vanessa Hi vanessaiman Please can you give us an update on the situation here, as the message highlighted in bold is no longer present on your website and my balance has taken a bit of a hit today (c.2.6%), to below my initial investment level. I presume this isn't coincidence, but I've had no email and there appears to be no explanation on the website re: the current status of the loan. Presumably you have had to escalate the situation? Please advise the procedures from this point and what your company will be doing to recover the capital, if indeed that's the stage we're now at? TIA. Hi littonowl & pom, My apology for any confusion yesterday. The message has disappeared from your dashboard because the borrower is now back on track with their repayments. And as @pedz has mentioned, we did receive a partial redemption yesterday which made it seem as though a portion had been taken out of your balance. Our systems have since corrected this issue and your money should be hard at work, earning interest! Any activity should now be seen on your transaction history. If you have any questions, please feel free to let me know. Best, Vanessa
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Post by vanessaiman on Mar 3, 2017 12:24:47 GMT
Hi littleoldlady, I appreciate the feedback, I will be passing this on to our technical team. In the meantime, if you'd like to discuss this further please feel free to contact us on support@octopuschoice.com Best, Vanessa
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littonowl
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Post by littonowl on Mar 3, 2017 12:42:50 GMT
Hi vanessaiman Please can you give us an update on the situation here, as the message highlighted in bold is no longer present on your website and my balance has taken a bit of a hit today (c.2.6%), to below my initial investment level. I presume this isn't coincidence, but I've had no email and there appears to be no explanation on the website re: the current status of the loan. Presumably you have had to escalate the situation? Please advise the procedures from this point and what your company will be doing to recover the capital, if indeed that's the stage we're now at? TIA. Hi littonowl & pom , My apology for any confusion yesterday. The message has disappeared from your dashboard because the borrower is now back on track with their repayments. And as @pedz has mentioned, we did receive a partial redemption yesterday which made it seem as though a portion had been taken out of your balance. Our systems have since corrected this issue and your money should be hard at work, earning interest! Any activity should now be seen on your transaction history. If you have any questions, please feel free to let me know. Best, Vanessa Thanks for the explanation vanessaiman , sounds like good news indeed! Like pom I now have a 'pending investment' amount, which when concluded and added to the 'total', will bring my Account value back to where it was before. It would seem the 'total' figure therefore, is only the total value of current investments (rather than the total value of your account), and does not include any pending transactions ?
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Post by vanessaiman on Mar 3, 2017 14:50:21 GMT
Hi littonowl, No problem! Yes, you're correct the total investment on your dashboard is the total value of current investments – and any pending investments will be allocated into a loan. Best, Vanessa
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pom
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Post by pom on Mar 3, 2017 15:07:03 GMT
Hi pom , No problem! Yes, you're correct the total investment on your dashboard is the total value of current investments – and any pending investments will be allocated into a loan. Best, Vanessa I think that was meant to be directed at littonowl
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ilmoro
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'Wondering which of the bu***rs to blame, and watching for pigs on the wing.' - Pink Floyd
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Post by ilmoro on Mar 3, 2017 15:46:01 GMT
Our systems have since corrected this issue and your money should be hard at work, earning interest! Should be but apparently isnt in my case as its still pending today, despite there being pages of loan availability. Your systems do seem to be quite slow at allocating investments. I assume it isnt all done manually, though at times it feels like it.
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Post by vanessaiman on Mar 3, 2017 15:46:47 GMT
Hi pom , No problem! Yes, you're correct the total investment on your dashboard is the total value of current investments – and any pending investments will be allocated into a loan. Best, Vanessa I think that was meant to be directed at littonowl Sorry about that!
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littonowl
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Post by littonowl on Mar 13, 2017 23:27:20 GMT
Payments late on another loan, this time it would appear to be my biggest loan, accounting for 5.5% of my overall balance. Let's hope this one gets resolved as efficiently as the last one.
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bigfoot12
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Post by bigfoot12 on Mar 13, 2017 23:50:44 GMT
Payments late on another loan, this time it would appear to be my biggest loan, accounting for 5.5% of my overall balance. Let's hope this one gets resolved as efficiently as the last one. Same here, not quite as high a % as you, but still much larger than last time. Fingers crossed.
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littleoldlady
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Running down all platforms due to age
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Post by littleoldlady on Mar 14, 2017 7:33:37 GMT
Payments late on another loan, this time it would appear to be my biggest loan, accounting for 5.5% of my overall balance. Let's hope this one gets resolved as efficiently as the last one. I also have one. It appears to be one of two only taken out last month. Strangely, although they are both the same amount, rate and date the accumulated interest is different. See screen shot:
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Post by peerlessperil on Oct 17, 2017 20:37:37 GMT
Hi Upland, I'm happy to hear you're opened up an account with us! At Octopus Choice we aim to reach 40 loans as there is a very marginal reduction of risk for a portfolio above 40, you can find our reasoning behind this here. Like you said getting the algorithm balance can be difficult, so every time somebody invests with us we distribute that investment across loans with a minimum of £10 in each loan. For example if you invest £30, we will then invest 3 loans for you (so not 20 or 40). Please do let me know how its going. Best, Vanessa This really is quite alarming if it is the rationale for the diversification policy. You can't take an academic paper that seeks to apply equity portfolio diversification theory to commercial property...and then think the conclusion is remotely relevant to a loan portfolio. Loans trading at par have an asymmetric risk profile - if all goes well you get your coupon, if things go badly you can lose 100% of capital plus your accrued. Equity diversification theory assumes that for every share that drops 50%, there is another in your portfolio that might double to make up the loss. 40 holdings is nowhere near sufficient to properly diversify a fixed income portfolio (even after taking into account the 5% first loss tranches),whereas holding only 40 equities/properties isn't necessarily crazy. 150 is more like it for corporate bonds/loans. The famous Disraeli/Twain quote is wrong - it should have been "Lies, Damn Lies and the Blatant Abuse of Statistics". Admitting there aren't enough new loans to diversify into immediately would be the correct rationale.
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macq
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Post by macq on Oct 17, 2017 21:54:06 GMT
Hi Upland, I'm happy to hear you're opened up an account with us! At Octopus Choice we aim to reach 40 loans as there is a very marginal reduction of risk for a portfolio above 40, you can find our reasoning behind this here. Like you said getting the algorithm balance can be difficult, so every time somebody invests with us we distribute that investment across loans with a minimum of £10 in each loan. For example if you invest £30, we will then invest 3 loans for you (so not 20 or 40). Please do let me know how its going. Best, Vanessa This really is quite alarming if it is the rationale for the diversification policy. You can't take an academic paper that seeks to apply equity portfolio diversification theory to commercial property...and then think the conclusion is remotely relevant to a loan portfolio. Loans trading at par have an asymmetric risk profile - if all goes well you get your coupon, if things go badly you can lose 100% of capital plus your accrued. Equity diversification theory assumes that for every share that drops 50%, there is another in your portfolio that might double to make up the loss. 40 holdings is nowhere near sufficient to properly diversify a fixed income portfolio (even after taking into account the 5% first loss tranches),whereas holding only 40 equities/properties isn't necessarily crazy. 150 is more like it for corporate bonds/loans. The famous Disraeli/Twain quote is wrong - it should have been "Lies, Damn Lies and the Blatant Abuse of Statistics". Admitting there aren't enough new loans to diversify into immediately would be the correct rationale. my worry is that i have more then the 150 loans you would like but the percentages are very random.So i have everything from £10/20 up to £400/500 but hopefully they will get broken down by reinvestment sooner rather then later
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Post by peerlessperil on Oct 17, 2017 22:44:52 GMT
I'm not invested on this platform yet, so thanks for the insight macqWas perusing the Octopus board wondering whether this was another platform worth adding to my roster. Quite a few things appear to be a little too random for my liking though, not just their understanding of statistics. It seems a bit like AC's GBBA, where you can end up with some unintended consequences if you don't drip feed the money in over time (I exited pronto and stuck to the MLIA) There are some chunky loans in there, and we don't don't know if they are mansions, blocks of flats or commercial - for instance £8.7m in CM1? Could be an office block, could be retail, could be a block of flats. The loan book also seems very London-centric, and high-value London resi is not the most resilient part of the market these days? The LTVs are OK for pure resi, but I'm not sure I like the preponderance of 70% LTVs if there is commercial mixed in there and the min diversification is 10 loans! My key question: what does Octopus Choice offer that can't be done better with Kuflink (for those who prefer to self select, and like to see skin in the game) or AC's property backed account (for those wanting fire & forget)?
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macq
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Post by macq on Oct 18, 2017 7:38:55 GMT
I'm not invested on this platform yet, so thanks for the insight macq Was perusing the Octopus board wondering whether this was another platform worth adding to my roster. Quite a few things appear to be a little too random for my liking though, not just their understanding of statistics. It seems a bit like AC's GBBA, where you can end up with some unintended consequences if you don't drip feed the money in over time (I exited pronto and stuck to the MLIA) There are some chunky loans in there, and we don't don't know if they are mansions, blocks of flats or commercial - for instance £8.7m in CM1? Could be an office block, could be retail, could be a block of flats. The loan book also seems very London-centric, and high-value London resi is not the most resilient part of the market these days? The LTVs are OK for pure resi, but I'm not sure I like the preponderance of 70% LTVs if there is commercial mixed in there and the min diversification is 10 loans! My key question: what does Octopus Choice offer that can't be done better with Kuflink (for those who prefer to self select, and like to see skin in the game) or AC's property backed account (for those wanting fire & forget)? Not sure it is better then KL or AC and the others do have a little higher rates which is why i am also looking at KL and also the question of the diversification and knowing what loans you are in has come up before on this thread. For me i went with them when they started as i knew the company name from their investment funds and that they had been around for quite a while (not very scientific i know).I seem to be the only one from reading these threads who is not worried about knowing the details of each loan as that was the idea behind set & forget i could then put more time in to other DD.Its a bit like buying a fund over shares i know what market i'm in but i trust them to get it right.But admit there is always the worry they may take on loans just for the product but guess that's where the trust comes in. I did learn early on to spread the lump sums as i could see some loans building a big sum but not sure from what i have read that the same could not be said for LB or LW.I also like being able to set up a monthly payment or top up with a card But do think the rate could be a bit higher compered to others
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Post by keyboardworrier on Oct 18, 2017 10:05:31 GMT
I'm not invested on this platform yet, so thanks for the insight macq Was perusing the Octopus board wondering whether this was another platform worth adding to my roster. Quite a few things appear to be a little too random for my liking though, not just their understanding of statistics. It seems a bit like AC's GBBA, where you can end up with some unintended consequences if you don't drip feed the money in over time (I exited pronto and stuck to the MLIA) There are some chunky loans in there, and we don't don't know if they are mansions, blocks of flats or commercial - for instance £8.7m in CM1? Could be an office block, could be retail, could be a block of flats. The loan book also seems very London-centric, and high-value London resi is not the most resilient part of the market these days? The LTVs are OK for pure resi, but I'm not sure I like the preponderance of 70% LTVs if there is commercial mixed in there and the min diversification is 10 loans! My key question: what does Octopus Choice offer that can't be done better with Kuflink (for those who prefer to self select, and like to see skin in the game) or AC's property backed account (for those wanting fire & forget)?In my opinion, nothing. When you break down all the clever marketing that OC engage in, it leaves us investing in loans with around 65% LTV for 4% or so, which in my opinion isn't really worth the risk and is why I will be moving funds from OC to kuflink as and when they have more loans available.
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