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Post by oldnick on Jan 13, 2015 15:05:26 GMT
Granted, however, it seems a major departure from established procedure for a loan to be sufficiently close to drawdown that UW bids are being called in, and yet so far away from drawdown that it does not yet appear in the upcoming loans section. Does this mean AC are abandoning the upcoming loans section, with the intention of giving retail investors zero notice of a new loan going forwards? It does appear to be heading in that direction. In the upcoming loans under the drawdown tab the information tends to read '4-6 weeks after close of auction' with little indication when the close will be. So you either need to set your target investment to whatever not of course knowing when the units will become available (if at all) or simply take your chances on the AM. The days of getting involved before the loan goes live are IMO over for retail investors. AC have managed to sort out the drawdown delays and all the associated queries that went with it and investors are now in the dark. So it's become more of a passive lending/investing scenario. No doubt a quieter life for AC but less 'fun' for the retail lenders. I do hope it isn't the same investors who didn't like their money committed while the legals were being dotted and crossed (which took an interminable time if memory serves me correctly) who are now dissatisfied that they aren't in at the 'beginning'. Surely, beginning to earn sooner is what everyone wants isn't it? Granted the pickings are too thin at the moment so there's a mad rush for everything that comes on the market, but that's a different issue. Now that loans are flagged as up and coming there's time to bring money onto the platform and take a share of what's available. Ideally there would be no dead time at all, but when numerous parties are all contributing information at their own speed 'it's ready when it's ready'. The only way to reduce dead time would be to get all the legals sewn up, then announce that the loan would go live in the next few days, giving just enough time for transfer of funds. Too short a time and some would complain that they were busy/away/asleep and missed out, too long and the underwriters will be complaining that they're not recycling their money quickly enough. What are AC to do?
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Post by batchoy on Jan 13, 2015 15:10:44 GMT
Granted, however, it seems a major departure from established procedure for a loan to be sufficiently close to drawdown that UW bids are being called in, and yet so far away from drawdown that it does not yet appear in the upcoming loans section. Does this mean AC are abandoning the upcoming loans section, with the intention of giving retail investors zero notice of a new loan going forwards? It does appear to be heading in that direction. In the upcoming loans under the drawdown tab the information tends to read '4-6 weeks after close of auction' with little indication when the close will be. So you either need to set your target investment to whatever not of course knowing when the units will become available (if at all) or simply take your chances on the AM. The days of getting involved before the loan goes live are IMO over for retail investors. AC have managed to sort out the drawdown delays and all the associated queries that went with it and investors are now in the dark. So it's become more of a passive lending/investing scenario. No doubt a quieter life for AC but less 'fun' for the retail lenders. Not only less fun but other than for very large or very unpopular loans, the current AC model has put an end the type of large investments that their loans are ideally suited for. Being fully backed by security AC loan are ideal for large investments due to the reduced risk involved, however the current model with loans being shared out amongst those with targets set and funds in place rather than on a first come first served bid basis the model is more suited to small monthly deposits that can be slowly absorbed by the shrapnelator and invested piecemeal fashion. Also whilst the new model on the surface appears to have solved the dead money issue by removing drawdown delays, it has created a whole new dead money issue whereby funds have to be placed in the MLIA in the hope that they will be invested in loans.
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oldgrumpy
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Post by oldgrumpy on Jan 13, 2015 15:27:47 GMT
"Too short a time and some would complain that they were busy/away/asleep and missed out..."
E-mail + SMS should be more than enough (as SS do)... if they don't respond, tough! I'd like up to three days notice of a loan becoming live for us .... time to transfer more substantial funds than I'm prepared to leave in MLIA with everything else disabled*, maybe for weeks.
* otherwise MLIA snaps it up on other loans.
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bugs4me
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Post by bugs4me on Jan 13, 2015 15:34:27 GMT
It does appear to be heading in that direction. In the upcoming loans under the drawdown tab the information tends to read '4-6 weeks after close of auction' with little indication when the close will be. So you either need to set your target investment to whatever not of course knowing when the units will become available (if at all) or simply take your chances on the AM. The days of getting involved before the loan goes live are IMO over for retail investors. AC have managed to sort out the drawdown delays and all the associated queries that went with it and investors are now in the dark. So it's become more of a passive lending/investing scenario. No doubt a quieter life for AC but less 'fun' for the retail lenders. <snip> What are AC to do? More to the point IMO, with a few loans due to mature over the next month or three, what am I, as a lender/investor, supposed to do? Leave the money hanging around hoping to pick up some bits here and there or move on to other pastures where I can have a more active engagement.
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tonyr
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Post by tonyr on Jan 13, 2015 15:35:36 GMT
South Coast P* & M* S* Tranche 4 was called last week ... No such thing as far as I'm aware - there's the original loan under the "repaid" section and tranche 2 under the "live" section, but not even a tranche 3 in the "upcoming loans"/"coming soon" section, let alone a tranche 4. As far as I'm concerned, the only upcoming loans that exist are #135, and #147 to #151 inclusive, and there are no other loans in the pipeline with underwriting in place (which I had believed were the criteria for displaying them in the "upcoming loans"/"coming soon" section). Have AC been moving the goalposts without telling anyone again? Sorry - I really messed that one up. I meant to say Midl*s Tra* Fina* Provider Loan Tranche 5 (#111). I don't have made a worse hash of that bit.
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Post by batchoy on Jan 13, 2015 15:39:14 GMT
"Too short a time and some would complain that they were busy/away/asleep and missed out..."
E-mail + SMS should be more than enough (as SS do)... if they don't respond, tough! I'd like up to three days notice of a loan becoming live for us .... time to transfer more substantial funds than I'm prepared to leave in MLIA with everything else disabled*, maybe for weeks.
* otherwise MLIA snaps it up on other loans.
It really depends on what you mean by more substantial, but with the the new model unless the loan is very big or very unpopular you aren't going to get substantial amounts invested into new loans. Doing a rough estimate on the carpet loan that is waiting in the wings once the shrapnelator has done its thing my view is that it is quite probable that investors will see themselves getting sub £100 chunks. So you could well find yourself rushing to get a substantial amount into the MLIA in time for the release of the loan, only to be withdrawing most of it the day after the release and waiting another three days to have it credited back into your bank account.
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jonno
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Post by jonno on Jan 13, 2015 15:47:09 GMT
"Too short a time and some would complain that they were busy/away/asleep and missed out..."
E-mail + SMS should be more than enough (as SS do)... if they don't respond, tough! I'd like up to three days notice of a loan becoming live for us .... time to transfer more substantial funds than I'm prepared to leave in MLIA with everything else disabled*, maybe for weeks.
* otherwise MLIA snaps it up on other loans.
: I asked chris a question precisely on this issue on another thread last week, but he has apparently chose not to respond.
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oldgrumpy
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Post by oldgrumpy on Jan 13, 2015 15:55:03 GMT
"Too short a time and some would complain that they were busy/away/asleep and missed out..."
E-mail + SMS should be more than enough (as SS do)... if they don't respond, tough! I'd like up to three days notice of a loan becoming live for us .... time to transfer more substantial funds than I'm prepared to leave in MLIA with everything else disabled*, maybe for weeks.
* otherwise MLIA snaps it up on other loans.
It really depends on what you mean by more substantial, but with the the new model unless the loan is very big or very unpopular you aren't going to get substantial amounts invested into new loans. Doing a rough estimate on the carpet loan that is waiting in the wings once the shrapnelator has done its thing my view is that it is quite probable that investors will see themselves getting sub £100 chunks. So you could well find yourself rushing to get a substantial amount into the MLIA in time for the release of the loan, only to be withdrawing most of it the day after the release and waiting another three days to have it credited back into your bank account. Yes ... there is that. What I have been doing is accumulating more than I actually need on quite a few other smallish loans (easy to sell) so I can leap into action in £100+ chunks as and when something is about to (or actually does) appear.
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Post by batchoy on Jan 13, 2015 15:55:07 GMT
More to the point IMO, with a few loans due to mature over the next month or three, what am I, as a lender/investor, supposed to do? Leave the money hanging around hoping to pick up some bits here and there or move on to other pastures where I can have a more active engagement. In the short term if you have large investments then it is probably the case that you will need to take you money elsewhere, in the longer term once all your large pre-shrapnelator loans have matured and gone it won't be such an issue as it will typically only small amounts that are maturing at any one time, what will be the limiting factor with be the size of AC's pipeline of new loans coming on stream in relation to the number of active investors that they have as this will be the govern factor for the size of the shares that you have in an one loan
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niceguy37
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Post by niceguy37 on Jan 13, 2015 15:55:52 GMT
It does appear to be heading in that direction. In the upcoming loans under the drawdown tab the information tends to read '4-6 weeks after close of auction' with little indication when the close will be. So you either need to set your target investment to whatever not of course knowing when the units will become available (if at all) or simply take your chances on the AM. The days of getting involved before the loan goes live are IMO over for retail investors. AC have managed to sort out the drawdown delays and all the associated queries that went with it and investors are now in the dark. So it's become more of a passive lending/investing scenario. No doubt a quieter life for AC but less 'fun' for the retail lenders. Not only less fun but other than for very large or very unpopular loans, the current AC model has put an end the type of large investments that their loans are ideally suited for. Being fully backed by security AC loan are ideal for large investments due to the reduced risk involved, however the current model with loans being shared out amongst those with targets set and funds in place rather than on a first come first served bid basis the model is more suited to small monthly deposits that can be slowly absorbed by the shrapnelator and invested piecemeal fashion. Also whilst the new model on the surface appears to have solved the dead money issue by removing drawdown delays, it has created a whole new dead money issue whereby funds have to be placed in the MLIA in the hope that they will be invested in loans. I've suggested an investment/diversification algorithm which tries to invest sooner in what's available (subject to the lender's loan choices), and then tries to buy up the harder-to-come-by loans as and when it can, selling off surplus bits of the over-weight loans that were initially purchased in order to get invested promptly. This is similar to that OG says he's doing manually: "What I have been doing is accumulating more than I actually need on quite a few other smallish loans (easy to sell) so I can leap into action in £100+ chunks as and when something is about to (or actually does) appear." Chris said he'd look at it in due course, but I imagine that AC have higher priorities which might include e-mail updates/notifications, and selling at a discount.
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tonyr
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Post by tonyr on Jan 13, 2015 15:58:03 GMT
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tonyr
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Post by tonyr on Jan 13, 2015 16:10:31 GMT
batchoy. I agree. If I look at my portfolio a year ago, I had a say 20 loans, typically in the £5k-15k territory. I actively liked the yield vs. credit risk trade-off on each loan. Now I seem to have 70 loans, many of which are in shrapnel sized amounts less than £1k. Quite a few of the loans I really don't like the credit risk on but I taken a small slice just to redeploy capital. The yield on my portfolio is lower, the credit quality is lower (in my view) but I've become more "passively" diversified. The problem for me has never been a few months dead-time on a 3y or 5y loan (the exception is short bridge loans). The issue has always been to get material access to credit risks I want to take on. I used to get this access but now I'm completely shut out. Only the UW get this access and what's more I'm paying for their access through a lower yield. UW are not my enemy but the're not my friend either! What I don't understand is why AC wants to shut people like me out from bidding for 10k of a loan? As I understand the system, underwriters can only retain a maximum of 50%. Does this mechanism work for you - that is if underwriters could only keep (say) 10% then would you be happy? I think we all agree that we want to see more loans to invest in - and that means getting enough underwriters funds on the system fund these loans in the first instance. Underwritng is expensive, you've got to have all the money you pledge and it can stay hanging around as cash for a long time. There's no underwriter I'm talking to that thinks it's clearly better to be underwriting than being a retail investor and there is a lot of feeling that being a retail investor gives a lot more flexibility and much less work for about the same rewards. So I think AC have got the model right - perhaps 50% retained is the wrong number but it could also be the right number.
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sl75
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Post by sl75 on Jan 13, 2015 16:14:29 GMT
Sorry - I really messed that one up. I meant to say Midl*s Tra* Fina* Provider Loan Tranche 5 (#111). I don't have made a worse hash of that bit. Different loan number, but same comment - as far as retail investors are concerned, that loan isn't "coming soon" either. [although less "problematic" in this specific instance, as there's plenty enough of tranches 1-4 still available to buy]
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Post by batchoy on Jan 13, 2015 16:18:00 GMT
batchoy. I agree. If I look at my portfolio a year ago, I had a say 20 loans, typically in the £5k-15k territory. I actively liked the yield vs. credit risk trade-off on each loan. Now I seem to have 70 loans, many of which are in shrapnel sized amounts less than £1k. Quite a few of the loans I really don't like the credit risk on but I taken a small slice just to redeploy capital. The yield on my portfolio is lower, the credit quality is lower (in my view) but I've become more "passively" diversified. The problem for me has never been a few months dead-time on a 3y or 5y loan (the exception is short bridge loans). The issue has always been to get material access to credit risks I want to take on. I used to get this access but now I'm completely shut out. Only the UW get this access and what's more I'm paying for their access through a lower yield. UW are not my enemy but the're not my friend either! What I don't understand is why AC wants to shut people like me out from bidding for 10k of a loan? I know what you mean which amongst other things is why I am leaving the platform. It would seem to be that AC believe that they have a sufficient critical mass of small investors willing to invest <£1K (or even <£100) amounts in individual loans that they no longer need or even want larger investors.
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Post by batchoy on Jan 13, 2015 16:28:24 GMT
batchoy. I agree. If I look at my portfolio a year ago, I had a say 20 loans, typically in the £5k-15k territory. I actively liked the yield vs. credit risk trade-off on each loan. Now I seem to have 70 loans, many of which are in shrapnel sized amounts less than £1k. Quite a few of the loans I really don't like the credit risk on but I taken a small slice just to redeploy capital. The yield on my portfolio is lower, the credit quality is lower (in my view) but I've become more "passively" diversified. The problem for me has never been a few months dead-time on a 3y or 5y loan (the exception is short bridge loans). The issue has always been to get material access to credit risks I want to take on. I used to get this access but now I'm completely shut out. Only the UW get this access and what's more I'm paying for their access through a lower yield. UW are not my enemy but the're not my friend either! What I don't understand is why AC wants to shut people like me out from bidding for 10k of a loan? As I understand the system, underwriters can only retain a maximum of 50%. Does this mechanism work for you - that is if underwriters could only keep (say) 10% then would you be happy? I think we all agree that we want to see more loans to invest in - and that means getting enough underwriters funds on the system fund these loans in the first instance. Underwritng is expensive, you've got to have all the money you pledge and it can stay hanging around as cash for a long time. There's no underwriter I'm talking to that thinks it's clearly better to be underwriting than being a retail investor and there is a lot of feeling that being a retail investor gives a lot more flexibility and much less work for about the same rewards. So I think AC have got the model right - perhaps 50% retained is the wrong number but it could also be the right number. The amount the underwriters hold is not the issue, the issue comes from the fact that loans are now shared out based on investors targets and available funds rather than on a first come first served basis. So you have the situation where previously lenders would be able to bid for the size of share they wanted (unless AC set a cap) now get a share whose size is based on the number of other lenders that have also targeted the loan and have funds available. So taking the upcoming carpet loan, under the old model I could and would have bid for say a £1k share and if I was fast enough I would have got it, but under the new model even if I set my target for £1k and have £1k of uninvested funds in my MLIA the shrapnelator will probably only give me <10% of what I am looking for.
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