jw01
Posts: 62 
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Post by jw01 on Mar 14, 2017 17:42:37 GMT
It is now one month to the day since any of my money was invested and that was at the princely rate of 6% before fees.
Cash in bank going up steadily.
Headline rate going down steadily.
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oldgrumpy
Member of DD Central
Posts: 5,087
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Post by oldgrumpy on Mar 14, 2017 17:59:58 GMT
I don't understand how BM can justify investing nothing of yours for a month, when according to Stephen there are a lot of loans going through. My account is not wonderful, bumbling along at about 90% deployed funds, but to maintain that on total of around £10K I have had 27 loans in the last four weeks, on nine separate days.
We were told there is a display showing accounts and their figures, so why hasn't a case like this been acted upon weeks ago?
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Post by khampson on Mar 14, 2017 18:39:46 GMT
It is now one month to the day since any of my money was invested and that was at the princely rate of 6% before fees. Cash in bank going up steadily. Headline rate going down steadily. Surely this is an error, have you contacted BondMason regarding this? , I certainly hope there is an explanation for you, I liquidated my account and put 2.5k in 25 days ago, I am just under 50% invested with my settings at 1% I have 42 loans and nothing since the 10th March, maybe BM is a victim of its own success and new members are outstretching new quality loans?
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Post by stevefindlay on Mar 14, 2017 19:45:09 GMT
It is now one month to the day since any of my money was invested and that was at the princely rate of 6% before fees. Cash in bank going up steadily. Headline rate going down steadily. That does sound strange - please can you send me your account details: invest@bondmason.com?
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Post by rookyone on Mar 18, 2017 17:21:30 GMT
Week 6 of 4 increased funds update (2 weeks overdue)
Current stats are now
No in Portfolio 89 (6 less than last week)
BM have invested 88.1% of my funds (3% less on last week)
This gives a BM calculated return of 8.85% (increase of 0.07%)
Current XIRR (all funds, invested and not invested) is 5.02% (increase of 0.26% on last week)
Week 5 was bad, however week 6 was significant worse. Only 1 new investment, whilst 7 older ones paid back. Movement towards being fully funded actually went backwards, I now have less funds invested... In fact since opening an account in early Sep 2016, I have never been close to being fully funded...
The XIRR however, increased slightly, and for the first time broke through the 5% barrier, which is the same as I'm getting with my BOS FSCS protected account (no worry or need to monitor the BOS savings)
Bondmason state on their website '7-28 days for funds to be fully deployed'. 42 days and counting and this statement is still busted for my investment.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 19, 2017 12:43:29 GMT
Week 6 of 4 increased funds update (2 weeks overdue) Current stats are now No in Portfolio 89 (6 less than last week) BM have invested 88.1% of my funds (3% less on last week) This gives a BM calculated return of 8.85% (increase of 0.07%) Current XIRR (all funds, invested and not invested) is 5.02% (increase of 0.26% on last week) Week 5 was bad, however week 6 was significant worse. Only 1 new investment, whilst 7 older ones paid back. Movement towards being fully funded actually went backwards, I now have less funds invested... In fact since opening an account in early Sep 2016, I have never been close to being fully funded... The XIRR however, increased slightly, and for the first time broke through the 5% barrier, which is the same as I'm getting with my BOS FSCS protected account (no worry or need to monitor the BOS savings) Bondmason state on their website '7-28 days for funds to be fully deployed'. 42 days and counting and this statement is still busted for my investment. Without going too far off topic - you're getting 5% at Bank of Scotland? How on earth is that possible?
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nush
Member of DD Central
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Post by nush on Mar 19, 2017 14:05:44 GMT
my BOS accounts only pay 3%, nationwide flex are still paying 5% but not for much longer, santander saver is 5% that ends soon as well, oh well it was fun while it lasted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 19, 2017 15:12:11 GMT
my BOS accounts only pay 3%, nationwide flex are still paying 5% but not for much longer, santander saver is 5% that ends soon as well, oh well it was fun while it lasted Oh ok, but these aren't accounts where you can 'dump' say £10k and get those interest rates. They're all £xxx/month type savings accounts, is that right?
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nush
Member of DD Central
Posts: 396
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Post by nush on Mar 19, 2017 16:46:00 GMT
my BOS accounts only pay 3%, nationwide flex are still paying 5% but not for much longer, santander saver is 5% that ends soon as well, oh well it was fun while it lasted Oh ok, but these aren't accounts where you can 'dump' say £10k and get those interest rates. They're all £xxx/month type savings accounts, is that right? i agree, but would still like to know how you get 5% from BOS
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Post by stevefindlay on Mar 20, 2017 15:36:26 GMT
Week 6 of 4 increased funds update (2 weeks overdue) Current stats are now No in Portfolio 89 (6 less than last week) BM have invested 88.1% of my funds (3% less on last week) This gives a BM calculated return of 8.85% (increase of 0.07%) Current XIRR (all funds, invested and not invested) is 5.02% (increase of 0.26% on last week) Week 5 was bad, however week 6 was significant worse. Only 1 new investment, whilst 7 older ones paid back. Movement towards being fully funded actually went backwards, I now have less funds invested... In fact since opening an account in early Sep 2016, I have never been close to being fully funded... The XIRR however, increased slightly, and for the first time broke through the 5% barrier, which is the same as I'm getting with my BOS FSCS protected account (no worry or need to monitor the BOS savings) Bondmason state on their website '7-28 days for funds to be fully deployed'. 42 days and counting and this statement is still busted for my investment. - I understand your frustrations over the speed of deployment. And we continue to work hard on this front. However, it may be worth noting that you have been allocated 89 hand-vetted positions in a few weeks, which is hopefully seen as a good thing. Also, we (BondMason) need to communicate expectations better as, when comparing the IRRs you've stated over your first 6 weeks, this is well within the range that we would expect to see: 
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Post by Deleted on Mar 21, 2017 8:51:13 GMT
To be honest, I would much prefer BM to take a few months to get the money invested, if that's what it takes to ensure the due diligence is solid.
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gnasher
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Post by gnasher on Mar 21, 2017 19:44:02 GMT
The title of this thread certainly fits my current feelings. I am frustrated because my rate of investment is so slow. Not because of the slow rate of allocation to loans, but because of the size of the allocations I have been getting.
As normal I started with adding £1k and my % allocation to each loan was at the max of 2%. So my first loan is for £20 - sorry but I am really not interested in £20 loan chunks. So I added another £3k, then I start getting £80 loan chunks, still too damn small. So even though I still have £3420 cash sitting around in there doing nothing I have felt complled to add another £2k to move things along a bit.
Why oh why not let us set a target portfolio size. So if I said £25k, I would then get £500 loan chunks, far far more sensible. I could then dribble in more funds as needed to keep things moving.
I want £500 loan chunks (or something more like that) , but there is no way I am going to add £25k upfront.
As I say VERY frustrating.
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keystone
Member of DD Central
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Post by keystone on Mar 21, 2017 23:50:43 GMT
Well, the title doesn't go far enough as far as I am concerned. My first thought on reading the above was who in their right mind would put £25k into Bond Mason! I'm sorry but this platform is a major let down, all hype and poor performance. 7 weeks to get invested, 4 defaults in less than 5 months, a lack of information on the defaults, no follow ups. Promises of changes to allocation, what happened to the 0.5% option or the rounding down of allocations rather than up. After 6 months my returns are actually better from Zopa+ even though that has 7 loans in default/late payment. Clearly, if the demand is for £500 per loan then this platform is for big hitters only who can afford the disappointment and losses. Even the withdraw function isn't as smooth as on other platforms, needing a follow up email to confirm a withdrawal request, why? Other platforms managed to automate it with just a click on withdraw button! At least it felt better after finally hitting that withdraw button. It could have been so much better, really really disappointed.  |
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Post by stevefindlay on Mar 22, 2017 8:18:05 GMT
Well, the title doesn't go far enough as far as I am concerned. My first thought on reading the above was who in their right mind would put £25k into Bond Mason! I'm sorry but this platform is a major let down, all hype and poor performance. 7 weeks to get invested, 4 defaults in less than 5 months, a lack of information on the defaults, no follow ups. Promises of changes to allocation, what happened to the 0.5% option or the rounding down of allocations rather than up. After 6 months my returns are actually better from Zopa+ even though that has 7 loans in default/late payment. Clearly, if the demand is for £500 per loan then this platform is for big hitters only who can afford the disappointment and losses. Even the withdraw function isn't as smooth as on other platforms, needing a follow up email to confirm a withdrawal request, why? Other platforms managed to automate it with just a click on withdraw button! At least it felt better after finally hitting that withdraw button. It could have been so much better, really really disappointed. - I am sorry that you are disappointed. Sincerely. We work very hard to try and deliver a great experience for all clients, and don't like to learn that clients are unhappy. Also, I think you make a good point - we've tried very hard to make our product suitable for retail clients of all sizes - from £1,000 to £1.0M. However, we get a disproportionate number of queries from clients with smaller balances (£1,000-2,000) asking questions which appear to confuse us with a bank current account / guaranteed returns / easy-access etc - seemingly new(er) to investing. (To be clear - I'm not saying that you are necessarily in this camp) Investing isn't easy and achieving good returns over the long run is difficult. It requires careful judgement and patience. I think our product may need tweaking: we probably share too much information with smaller investors, and try to enable them to get as good a return as possible (but this introduces uncertainty). I suspect we would be better off either (i) shooting for lower returns for smaller investors and do this in a simpler way (including introducing a tie-in period) or (ii) restricting our service to just High Net Worth Individuals and/or Sophisticated Investors. I think option (ii) would be a shame, as we want everyone to be able to access the returns available in this sector in a better way. However, for our business to succeed we can't spend all day holding the hands of many clients that only yield £10 of revenue per annum (i.e. 1% from a £1,000 account). Food for thought...
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keystone
Member of DD Central
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Post by keystone on Mar 22, 2017 12:49:56 GMT
Well, the title doesn't go far enough as far as I am concerned. My first thought on reading the above was who in their right mind would put £25k into Bond Mason! I'm sorry but this platform is a major let down, all hype and poor performance. 7 weeks to get invested, 4 defaults in less than 5 months, a lack of information on the defaults, no follow ups. Promises of changes to allocation, what happened to the 0.5% option or the rounding down of allocations rather than up. After 6 months my returns are actually better from Zopa+ even though that has 7 loans in default/late payment. Clearly, if the demand is for £500 per loan then this platform is for big hitters only who can afford the disappointment and losses. Even the withdraw function isn't as smooth as on other platforms, needing a follow up email to confirm a withdrawal request, why? Other platforms managed to automate it with just a click on withdraw button! At least it felt better after finally hitting that withdraw button. It could have been so much better, really really disappointed. - I am sorry that you are disappointed. Sincerely. We work very hard to try and deliver a great experience for all clients, and don't like to learn that clients are unhappy. Also, I think you make a good point - we've tried very hard to make our product suitable for retail clients of all sizes - from £1,000 to £1.0M. However, we get a disproportionate number of queries from clients with smaller balances (£1,000-2,000) asking questions which appear to confuse us with a bank current account / guaranteed returns / easy-access etc - seemingly new(er) to investing. (To be clear - I'm not saying that you are necessarily in this camp) How do you distinguish between a smaller investor and an investor who maybe spreading their investments over a number of platforms and if you present the information then you should be prepared for questioning of that information regardless of the amount invested. Either way it's better to present the information rather then not present it to smaller investors.Investing isn't easy and achieving good returns over the long run is difficult. It requires careful judgement and patience. True, but then if you raise expectations by highlighting expected returns over 1 year when you really mean over the longer term, and fail to meet your again expected deployment time frame you should be prepared for having to explain why.
I think our product may need tweaking: we probably share too much information with smaller investors, and try to enable them to get as good a return as possible (but this introduces uncertainty). I suspect we would be better off either (i) shooting for lower returns for smaller investors and do this in a simpler way (including introducing a tie-in period) or (ii) restricting our service to just High Net Worth Individuals and/or Sophisticated Investors. I think that approach is wrong, information is the key, you can never have too much information, trying to limit information and returns to smaller investors rather than providing an explanation of defaults for example smacks of an admission of failure, and a bunker mentality, retreating to HNW investors who don't question. Again I'm amazed that anyone would invest £25K and not want to question the defaults.
I think option (ii) would be a shame, as we want everyone to be able to access the returns available in this sector in a better way. However, for our business to succeed we can't spend all day holding the hands of many clients that only yield £10 of revenue per annum (i.e. 1% from a £1,000 account). I really do think that's a bit naive, surely you expected more questions from newer investors or those with smaller holdings, maybe you could be cutting off investors who maybe testing the water before committing further funds or who may like your model and increase holdings later. But if you say changes to allocations will be coming soon 0.5%, rounding down, etc then implement them rather than getting rid of these pesky smaller investors who are too much bother. I've withdrawn some funds, but I'm still invested with BM, but won't be adding further until you add smaller allocation features and better able to communicate defaults. Your a good communicator stevefindlay but I think BM have been raising expectations too much and failing to communicate the platform model and the risks! Wait for the questions to really start coming in when the defaults start to rise.
Food for thought...
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