Is investup still open?

No, looked at when it first launched but seemed to be bit of amateur operation. Now apparently owned by White Label/REBS which isnt a recommendation in my book. Other aggregators Bondmason and Goji though neither give you visibility of underlying loans/ability to pick your own like Investup.

Original Discussion thread here and if you search investup on forums there are a few other posts about.

Oh and ironically p2pindependentforum.com/post/202093/thread

Investup was offering loan parts for sale at 5% discount but the same loan at the same moment on original platform only had trading at a premium.
Not one I would currently recommend either due to parent company majority shareholders attitude to lenders.

I noticed that Investup had popped up on p2pmoney for a (ahem) whopping £25 cashback, and this combined with some mention of discounting in the thread above prompted me to have a quick window shop this morning. My conclusions: 

a) I find the website overly 'matey' :  "sorry, boring bit, now your address.." etc.

b) It now appears to be fully robot-ified, I can't see anyway to divert from this. It even has a name: Bert-E.

c) It offers a clear and simple way to avoid taking up the benefits of any due diligence that you may wish to perform, and will invest you in a range of P2P platforms that include Lendy, ReBS, and Sancus (Platform Black) . For this, they charge you 10% of your gross earnings, which is presumably going to be a lot higher net and after defaults. At this point, it was fairly clear to me that in it's current form, none of my money is going here.

d) To be fair, you can opt out of platforms that you don't want to lend on. This will however presumably enhance your chances of cash drag given that the maximum diversity Bert-E appears to permit is 2%.

e) When configuring your robot, you also have the chance to set a target interest rate of 7, 10, or 12%. It's not quite clear, but I'm assuming they mean the gross interest rate of various loans offer rather than realistically trying to achieve this rate after defaults. You can only choose one of these, which if my assumption is correct, is a little odd as that would further limit the investments the tool is going to be able to make for you. Also, surely some investors would like the chance to be part of some excellent value 10% proposals as well as higher risk 12% proposals, and not be forced to choose just one or the other.

f) As per the FAQ, it is not currently regulated by the FCA. The platform that is, not the robot of whom's FCA status I'm unsure.

g) The FAQ seems totally at odds with the operation of the site as it refers to choosing your own investments - I assume this is a relic from when more self-selection was permitted (?). Also, their blurb in their 'coming soon ISA' bit states " lend money either by using our automated Robo-lending tools, or pick and choose deals you like". I'd be surprised if you have no ability to self-select in a non-ISA but you do within an ISA?

h) The FAQ does not answer what I consider to be one of the most important questions - how do they choose their loans? Is it totally blind, or do they use their own 'expert' team to do DD for us?


I was clearly never going to be the target market for this platform, but I'm not sure it's a great option for those looking for hands-off investing currently. Has anyone properly tried it?