mikeb
Posts: 1,072 
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Post by mikeb on Sept 10, 2017 19:47:30 GMT
Hi OG.
We will never know as FC will never tell anyone.
I think you mean "we will never know, as whatever happens, it will be defined as a great success" !
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michaelc
Member of DD Central
Say No To T.D.S.
Posts: 5,707
Likes: 2,983
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Post by michaelc on Sept 11, 2017 12:00:35 GMT
I for one to degree happy with the change. But I am not at all happy with funding Circle. I wanted to express these views on the funding circle forum but have just discovered it has been shut down and I wonder why that was maybe so that we couldn't express our views any more. When I joined funding Circle I didn't quite understand why they allowed flippers and people on the forum granted probably not funding Circle employees told me that these individuals were necessary to oil the works funding Circle which I totally disagreed with. It seems to me that there has always been more cash than loans and that all the flippers were doing was speculating reducing their own risks by selling the loans on immediately after they had purchased them and reaping high rewards. If you are turning around alone every 2 weeks with a 3% markup that is some pretty good interest at virtually no risk. But I was told this was necessary. I was further alarmed when funding Circle announced that it was planning an API this of course would not give people like me access to funding circle via the API because the API on its own does nothing for me I would have to use the API within software I would have to develop which was not economically feasible for somebody with my amount of money. It would however be yet another tool that would allow people to speculate and abuse the system which funding circle seemed highly in favour of. When I recently contacted funding circle because of technical problems we somehow ended up on the topic of how it worked and I was forewarned that the change was going to happen. Because now apparently funding circle doesn't like flippers any more. When I brought up the subject of the API and that I was confused about the fact they were trying to shut out people like flippers because they were once developing an API they denied this. Funding circle are liars. I specifically remember them announcing an API or at least an intention to develop an API. These people are absolutely clueless, they have brought people through the doors on the promise of a fairer and more morally acceptable way of lending money yet they have done nothing but allow things to carry on just like at any other stock exchange and then retreat from those viewpoints was pretending they never held those views. I'll be glad to finally be able to get hold of some higher rate loans without having to pay somebody for doing absolutely nothing other than abusing the system to buy the loan faster than I ever could using software that I can't afford to develop. I am of course open to alternative lending platforms as funding circle does seem to not understand certain things. Their website is awful to navigate and it is very difficult to get information out of the website about your loans unless you are in fact running software to manipulate the website with. The whole setup seems to be in favour of such people yet funding circle deny they favour such people when they clearly do, perhaps not intentionally but certainly through their incompetence they make life-small lender and allow the big lender to run riot. Yet their mission statement was to allow the little guys like me fair access when in actual fact there is no such thing on funding circle. The abolishment of loan sale transaction fees is most welcome as it would seem funding circle has moved into a position where I would make exactly the same amount of interest I am making already but I will be able to move my money in and out of funding circle more smoothly and slightly more like a bank account. Except I will be making some interest. I have also never understood practice of removing the risk banned from a defaulted loan. What are they trying to hide is to mark I cannot actually understand which category of loans I have most defaults in because I'm not allowed to to know this information about my own money and loans it is taken away from me by funding circle. I'm starting to suspect that the aid loans in a star loans default far more often than funding circle would admit but of course I can never prove that because the proof is removed.
Can anybody recommend another platform that actually works? Maybe divide into a few paragraphs? Its hard to read as is.
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voss
Member of DD Central
Posts: 153
Likes: 84
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Post by voss on Sept 11, 2017 13:55:09 GMT
Can anybody recommend another platform that actually works? Lendy works well: property bridging loans and development loans. All loans secured on property. At the moment, there is slow loan flow so it is slow to get invested but things might pick up - the loan flow early this year was excellent.
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Post by df on Sept 11, 2017 16:24:03 GMT
Can anybody recommend another platform that actually works? If you want something similar to FC, have a look at Bond Mason. I'm no longer investing there, but it worked fine for me when I did - I think it is a good platform for what it is.
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Post by barneywol on Sept 12, 2017 8:24:48 GMT
I believe there is a strong analogy to the Stock Exchange: they lend money to large companies, and FC lend money to small ones. Those without the time or expertise can invest in tracker funds for the FTSE100 or FTSE-All Share indexes. This strikes me as very similar to the proposed new FC system, where you can invest in their Conservative or Balanced funds. But the Stock Exchange don't insist that you ONLY invest in one of those tracker funds - investors CAN do that, or invest in any companies they fancy.
Other P2P companies provide "invest and forget" funds, but FC was almost unique in allowing those with the time and expertise to invest in whatever they wanted, while also allowing those without those to automatically invest in "tracker" funds - but rather more flexibly by selecting which risk groups they would invest in.
If some people without the time to select individual loans have been complaining about the system, then they've chosen the wrong platform!
I hadn't been aware of the "bots and flippers" until all this started, but I can see the effect now I look. There are many things that FC could do to squash those people taking advantage of the system, without ruining it for those of us who use it as intended.
As others have said, good luck to anyone trying to sell at a 3% premium - but no-one is forced to pay that unless they really really want that particular loan.
I invested an extra lump when the announcement came out, in order to bolster my investment at the better rates, but have been hampered by FC making the old way of working very difficult in the weeks leading up to the changeover - causing their "secondary market" computer to log me off after 5 minutes (or less), and my having to continually re-login. I have found this spectacularly annoying. I was surprised to get a generic email shortly after the change announcement asking if I would recommend them. My answer was an absolute and resounding no! I am interested to see how the new system works, but it doesn't seem like the system I signed up for.
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Post by thunderchild on Sept 12, 2017 17:36:42 GMT
Since I have been on funding circle getting D and E loans has been impossible, because people used software to interact with the website and run it like a stock exchange, they buy up all of the high rate loans in small parts like £20 and then sell them on, so the only way to bump up my return rate is to go to the secondary market and buy the E loans for up to 21%, but they come with a premium often as high as 3%. It is all well and good to say don't buy them but it is the only way to get these high yield loans and they are still a good deal. But I don't see why people should be allowed to do this, there has always been a lot of money to fund loans, they don't need the ballast and frankly i don't see why FC never had a float of money to liquidate loans and then recupe the money through offering it to lenders. Instead they let the situation carry on with some people making by my estimate 76% (if you turn around a loan part every 2 weeks at 3%) with no risk while I'm getting 20% and take the risk for 5 years......
At some point they decided to release an official API to allow people to write their own software to interact with the website, this idea seems to have died and they now deny all knowledge of it, as they deny the flipper situation. So instead of just stopping the flippers they have decided to turn the thing on it's head. I don't overly mind as now I'll automatically make as much as i was making through hard work and handing money over to ripoff merchants. But they will never admit to the speculation that they have smiled on for so long and in order to cover their tracks are upsetting people.
I have therefore no faith in them and am weary of them as they are liars and have non of the transparency they promised.
Zopa once allowed you to lend to who you wanted and when they went automatic and made a right mess of it to the point I could not understand how it worked so I left for FC, The new FC system is at least understandable and I can see clearly that I can get my money out easily. I suspect that all platforms may have started with options but the masses don't understand investing and think that they are putting it into a bank account and don't understand the risks so I think most sites have moved to automation to protect people from their own stupidity.
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Post by william0101 on Sept 13, 2017 10:30:53 GMT
Dear thunderchild
as a relatively recent user of FC I do see where you are coming from.
However, you are repeating yourself a bit and are getting some things wrong in your accusations.
Other people have corrected obviously mistaken things as you have said them but you keep on digging at ideas that I (a relative newbie) know simply aren't true.
The problem as I see it is you're spreading your "my understanding" / "I hate technology" / "someone has more money than me" across so many threads and with so little humour and enormity of prolix that people just aren't listening any more.
If a mod thinks I am rude, go for it, put this post in the toilet.
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Post by thunderchild on Sept 13, 2017 11:45:20 GMT
I'm sorry you feel that way but as one person pointed out they never realised the situation with the flippers. I do not like being lied to, not when I have over 30K at stake and FC have done nothing but lie. I keep seeing this pattern with companies that claim to be ethical or doing it different from the last lot that screwed us all over, all they are doing is capitalising on the mistrust and still failing the customer either through incompetence or malice (incompetence in the case of FC). Also all of the recent threads are about the same thing: the changes to how FC works and as they have made clear they are stopping the speculators, they have not said so in so many words as they don't admit to the existence of the speculators but what the new lending limits do is clearly make it game over for the speculators (flippers) I'm sure that as i bed in I'll find something to be funny about  |
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bg
Member of DD Central
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Post by bg on Sept 13, 2017 12:03:06 GMT
I'm sorry you feel that way but as one person pointed out they never realised the situation with the flippers. I do not like being lied to, not when I have over 30K at stake and FC have done nothing but lie. I keep seeing this pattern with companies that claim to be ethical or doing it different from the last lot that screwed us all over, all they are doing is capitalising on the mistrust and still failing the customer either through incompetence or malice (incompetence in the case of FC). Also all of the recent threads are about the same thing: the changes to how FC works and as they have made clear they are stopping the speculators, they have not said so in so many words as they don't admit to the existence of the speculators but what the new lending limits do is clearly make it game over for the speculators (flippers) I'm sure that as i bed in I'll find something to be funny about Give your head a shake. You seriosuly think these changes are coming in so FC can stop the 'flippers'? That is just laughable. Maybe they are not saying as much because they don't care about it. In fact they have actively encouraged it. The reason they are making these changes are to try and morph into a mainstream style savings account (the same way Zopa did). They want people to feel comfortable putting their savings in and receiveing a decent return wheras previously it was just too complicated. All these balance sheets, credit scores etc just confuse the average punter, one button to invest is way easier to undersatnd. Once they get to a certain size its incredibly hard to allow individual loan selection. If you have 100,000+ users (which they clearly aspire to) then how are you going to divvy up a £10k loan without people such as you moaning and clogging up customer services. Easier just to close it all off and turn into a black box, now all they have to do is deal with the defaults.
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Post by thunderchild on Sept 13, 2017 16:32:23 GMT
I have never contacted customer services to complain that I could not get the loans I wanted, you seem to be making things up in your head. I can see the advantages to the masses that can't figure out that lending all to one loan is a bad idea but at the end of the day they already had what they are offering, it's called autobid (although lately even turned on my money just mounted up), this is all they are doing but removing all control. Zopa did this long ago as clearly they were concerned incompetent people would loose money and then bad mouth the site.
As far as I am concerned they were happy with the flippers, why else create or consider an API (that they now deny knowledge of - very suspicious), or they are just ignorant of the reality. They now say that the flippers are causing problems with the performance of the site. Personally I have never had a problem with site performance and this feels like rubbish as far as i know they are not actively blocking software from accessing the website but what they have done has killed off the flippers. People on this forum have made available addon's for web browsers that interrogate the site and retrieve information, are they going to actively block these? if they don't then their argument is pants. I have accepted buying loans at a markup to get the higher rate ones and i get the overall return I want, incidentally identical to what they are now offering but I don't see why I should have to do this and it flys in the face of the FC "mission". Yesterday a loan appeared on the market that is an E at 20.6%, by the evening it was gone as it was fully funded by auto bid or manual bid, it was the first I had ever seen.
All in all they don't seem to be very competent or can't see how badly wrong new ideas can go when the consequences are obvious to all but them so they back tracks quietly and make some silly excuse to distract from the real issue.
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sl125
Member of DD Central
Posts: 85
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Post by sl125 on Sept 13, 2017 18:45:52 GMT
So Thunderchild, I thought I'd put a couple of my thoughts about your many posts into just one reply.
Yesterday you said:
"Since I have been on funding circle getting D and E loans has been impossible, because people used software to interact with the website and run it like a stock exchange".
So, surely you must be supportive of the fact that FC have done something about this by removing the arbitrage opportunities that automated bots had over the rest of the market.
You also said:
" Instead they let the situation carry on with some people making by my estimate 76% (if you turn around a loan part every 2 weeks at 3%) with no risk while I'm getting 20% and take the risk for 5 years......".
Well, that's a big big "if"! Just because there are some people putting loan parts for sale at 3% speculatively does not mean they actually sell at that premium.
My own experience, as someone running a bot and flipping a portfolio of over £250k, is that the premium I actually sell at rarely goes above 0.5%. I also reiterate a point I've made on many posts that there is a black swan risk of holding a large amount in a loan ready to flip, and the loan goes belly up (a relatively unusual event, but nonetheless, with the amounts held on a loan to make flipping worthwhile, it is a risk that occasionally loses me a couple of thousand pounds).
My XIRR has been about 16%, which has been a very good run, and believe me when I say I'm both disappointed that my personal good times are coming to an end on 18th Sep, but I'm pleased for the good of FC and the FC investing community that the system is becoming fairer for all. In theory at least, you should now have as equal a chance of getting an E loan as I have.
One other thing you mention is that you haven't experienced poor performance. You must be the only one then... since the FC web servers must have had a huge problem coping with people pinging html gets every few seconds from their bots.
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Post by GSV3MIaC on Sept 13, 2017 19:22:04 GMT
And on the topic of the API .. support.fundingcircle.com/hc/en-us/articles/214637666-How-can-I-get-an-API-access-token-I have a dozen other API related links too, which FC have yet to take down. It was never released to retail lenders, only the whole loan folks. It WOULD have come with restrictions on how many bids per minute you could throw in (3, iirc), a limit which was never enforced on other forms of automation (bots), or even on manual 'grab all you can' bidders. FC had lots of notice about the flipper problems, and a dozen or more workable solutions, so the current changes are nothing to do with that (just run autobid, in its current form, BEFORE you let the manual folks loose. Job done). In the early days flippers served a useful (underwriter) purpose, they'd fund anything people didn't want (at a very high rate). With fixed rates, the only flipper option was to grab what people DID want, and resell for a profit. 3%? For most loans you are dreaming .. in the early days you could get 3% markup of a 3 year A+ which had a 15% coupon (when rates were variable), but those were rather rare beasts. And as SL125 says, there is a big risk, and a lot of cash drag (money sat there waiting for an opportunity to pounce). |
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Post by william0101 on Sept 15, 2017 2:45:46 GMT
My own experience, as someone running a bot and flipping a portfolio of over £250k, is that the premium I actually sell at rarely goes above 0.5%. I also reiterate a point I've made on many posts that there is a black swan risk of holding a large amount in a loan ready to flip, and the loan goes belly up (a relatively unusual event, but nonetheless, with the amounts held on a loan to make flipping worthwhile, it is a risk that occasionally loses me a couple of thousand pounds). I expect you have been providing myself and others with smaller portfolios the liquidity we've enjoyed hunting down good value on the SM. Dunno why no-one presents that as a positive about flippin' flippers :0 Alternatively, I have bought a lot of stuff at 0.5% and have sold quite a lot of it at 3% recently. Who da bad guy ? Me for buying at 0.5 and selling at 3 or someone else for buying at 0 and selling at 0.5 ? Or is thunderchild going to say everyone is naughty except him or her self
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