1st Impression where good, however since then not so...

stevefindlay - I was referring to automated email communication that I'd of thought would be easy to put in place to update clients on their initial investments.  For example, emails at 7, 14, 21, 28 days providing the % of funds invested.

I assume that most of your clients don't frequent this forum and would expect their initial investment to be near enough fully invested by 28 days.  Therefore, a courtesy email stating the % invested and perhaps why it hasn't been possible to fully invest by the 28 days would be wise (for example, low loan volume over the Christmas period, or record inflows of cash to the platform).

I think the real problem lies with the statement in the "How it Works" that says "It can take 7-28 days for your funds to be fully deployed".  In reality for a certain portion of clients, it may take significantly longer.

I'm trying to be constructive - I recognise that it's all too easy to bash a platform for not doing this or that.

Desposited my first £1k on Monday, and as of end of today, I've had £60 lent out. Not impressed so far. I'll give it another week, but if things don't improve, I'll be withdrawing. I could at least be getting some interest on £940 somewhere else.

There's clearly something a bit less than even-handed with the allocation algorithms - this week's been a very good one for new loans going round. It'll be your turn soon enough.

My mother started an account on Thursday, and was 84% invested across nearly 70 loans by the end of that day... I nearly doubled the amount in my own account this week yet, despite that, my %age invested has rocketed up from (IIRC) about 75% to 96%.

I would love this to be a black box account, like some of the other platforms where I don't have to check frequently. Unfortunately, due to the long 7 weeks it took for my funds to be deployed and that I have had 2 defaults in the short time I have been invested, my rate of return to date is well below expected and even though I am currently 98.50% invested at a higher headline rate.

After 6 months, I have calculated that that my final 1 year figure will be 6.44% after fees, baring no further defaults and rates staying exactly as they are. Now in reality, rates will change all the time but my current headline rate is almost at the highest it has been since I invested and I can't see it reaching over 10% which is what will be needed to return 7% after 1 year. I also have several invoice discounting loans which have passed their term length by a couple of months but are still classified as live, are these in reality late paying loans that may soon default?
 
As for default, there seems to be a very small margin for defaults. How long do invoice discounting recoveries take?

Cash drag seems to be have had a massive effect here and taking 7 weeks as opposed to less than 24 hours to be invested will have had a spectacular effect on returns.

I'm also finding the time I'm spending here to check performance leads me to question if this really is a fire and forget account I thought it would be and if the same time could be spent better elsewhere. I was planning to move further funds over from another platform to BM but have now decided against that option for now.

This a re-post from another thread on our boards. I thought it may be of interest here too:

"For a while I've wanted to create a couple of charts to illustrate the linkage between (1) Initial deployment (2) Ongoing deployment (3) Headline Rate and (4) Your return (IRR) over your first year with BondMason. Fortunately, this afternoon I've been able to find a few minutes to do this, so here are the charts...

Chart One: This has "normal" rates of deployment - 28 days to get fully invested then 95-100% deployment for the rest of the year



Chart Two: This has a slower rate of deployment - 40 days to get fully invested then 90-100% deployment for the rest of the year (and no, before you ask we are not looking to revise downward our deployment targets)



As you can see, the initial deployment rate has a big impact on IRR during the first part of the year, but by the end of the year the difference is less pronounced.

We may try and release this chart (or parts of it) in real time on your own dashboard. Let me know if that may be of interest and we can prioritise in the new feature list.  I think it could provide a good level of additional insight / transparency."

dan1 said - '....I'm not sure what to make of the various experiences on here but I intend to stick with it and make an assessment after a full 12 months....'

I think that's a fair assessment. My XIRR is at 1.34% and gradually rising but that's after less than 4 weeks with 73% deployment. Far, far too early to make a judgement and I think we need to cut BM some slack around these parts. They are after all a relatively new platform that are no doubt working their socks off (plus maybe some other parts) to make a success of what could prove to be a nice earning passive investment.

I have no objection to BM taking a headline 1% from the overall 8% thereby netting myself 7% although in reality the percentage take is 12.5%. There are plenty of other platforms earning I suspect well in excess of 50% and their DD leaves a lot to be desired. So I finish up, along with others doing a great deal of probing simply to get the information when in reality at 50% for virtually zero financial platform exposure they should be more forthcoming IMO. Plus of course you can only go so far with your own DD and still finish up getting the whole thing wrong.

So for diversification I'll stick with BM for the 12 months as it's a bit thin on the ground ATM with this type of investment elsewhere.

Week 5 of 4 increased funds update (1 week overdue)

Current stats are now

No in Portfolio 95 (3 more than last week)
BM have invested 91.12% of my funds (increase of approx' 0.1% on last week)
This gives a BM calculated return of 8.78% (decrease of 0.12%)
Current XIRR (all funds, invested and not invested) is 4.76% (increase of 0.14% on last week)

Week five was as flat as a pancake. No real movement towards being fully funded.  Maybe the algorithm is weighted towards the 7-28 fully funding statement and once out side this?

Bondmason state on their website '7-28 days for funds to be fully deployed'.  35 days and counting and this statement is still busted for my investment.