niceguy37
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Post by niceguy37 on Aug 7, 2014 8:52:20 GMT
On each loan, on the right-hand-side underneath Auto-Invest, there is a box entitled "Your Bids", showing any bids you've made for this loan. This was great when originally set up as bidding was the main way to buy loans, but now most lenders seem to acquire loans through the aftermarket, and there can be movements in and out over the life of a loan as lenders buy and sell.
I think it would be a helpful improvement in the "Your Bids" box could be upgraded to "Your Activity" showing pre-bids, bids, shadow bids, aftermarket purchases and sales for this loan.
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niceguy37
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Post by niceguy37 on Aug 4, 2014 10:27:46 GMT
Different lenders and borrowers have different requirements. RS seem to do just fine offering 6.5% downwards with no crowd DD or opportunity to manage your risk. We're settling into a level higher than that with plans to broaden the range of rates offered on our loans both up and down. I am a big fan of AC and looking forward to your upcoming developments. I expect to increase the amount I have with AC in the next six months, especially if the variety of loans you hint at appears, but I can't leave your comment about RS without responding. Time will tell the strength of the AC documentation; it is being tested for the first time now. Similarly we can't be sure about the strength of the Provision Fund; maybe it isn't big enough for the next downturn. RS does have the advantage that for a taxpayer there is no tax to pay on loss making loans. Assuming a high rate taxpayer with little use for capital losses then the net rate closes quite quickly for relatively modest AC losses. I don't expect that AC will suffer losses equivalent to an annualised 2%, but add in draw-down delays and these rates might not be that far apart. I too think that AC has a lot going for it, and am expanding my investment. I realise that AC may consider themselves to be in a different market niche to RS, but I do think that the best possible improvement that AC could make for me (and themselves) is a provision fund. The tax advantages are clear, especially for higher rate tax payers. Perhaps in time the government will level the playing field and allow us to net off losses against interest as the bank do, or perhaps this might become possible when P2P/P2B investments are allowable for ISAs, but until then a provision fund would be a major improvement. A provision fund might be optional, funded by a set percentage of interest (e.g. 10% of the loan interest rate), or set by AC on a loan by loan basis. The provision fund levy would be netted off interest payments to lenders by AC, thereby reducing our tax liability. I expect that allowing ISA investment in P2P may bring a flood of money and new investors to the market, and a provision fund will be a major incentive to new, and perhaps slightly more cautious, investors.
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niceguy37
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Post by niceguy37 on Aug 4, 2014 9:51:56 GMT
agent69, you might be surprised how quickly surplus loan parts that are offered at a few pence discount are snapped up. Perhaps we could have an account setting so we could opt for an email alert if anything is put on the aftermarket at a discount (with a threshold set by the lender e.g. 0.25%). I think that would improve liquidity, as anyone needing to prepared to offer a small discount would have their offers quickly advertised.
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niceguy37
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Post by niceguy37 on Aug 1, 2014 9:03:32 GMT
Also, it would be good if shadow bids could be funded when money gets in the account BEFORE buying stuff on the aftermarket. For example I currently have shadow bids to clear, and aftermarket bids, I am afraid that if the loan gets reimbursed, the autoinvest will invest the money and I will have no money left on AC to fund my shadow bids. Yes, we have to watch out! The only way I see round this is to disable all auto-invest mandates before transferring cash in specifically to called-in pay off a shadow bid. The only other method I can imagine is having a facility on the shadow bidding page whereby any selected "due" bid can be marked "SETTLE AS SOON AS CASH IS AVAILABLE IN THE HOLDING ACCOUNT" which automatically disables all auto-mandates until the shadow has been paid off. I wonder if we will eventually need different pots of allocated money: e.g. Pot A allocated for satisfying shadow accounts, Pot B for auto-invest, Pot C for pre-bids. Perhaps we could do with something along the lines of RateSetters re-investment settings, where a lender can specify whether returns from a particular market go to their holding account or for re-investment in a particular market. But this might add too much complexity, and it might be easier to have a single setting to specify whether returns should go to the holding account (i.e. auto-invest turned off globally).
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niceguy37
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Post by niceguy37 on Jul 29, 2014 15:10:00 GMT
A future enhancement that I think will become very useful would be: to be able to add a user rating or brief note to each loan. As the number of loans grows over time, and they sometimes have similar names, it is going to become harder and more time consuming scrolling through ever longer lists of loans. It would be handy to be able to add a personal rating and / or a brief note to each loan, so each lender can mark the loan with his or her opinion. This will make it much quicker looking through a list of loans, without the need to keep calling each one up to refresh one’s memory on the desirability of the loan.
The ranking could be 1-5 stars, or Must Have / Interesting / Possibly / Unlikely / Barge-Pole, and a little note on why.
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niceguy37
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General P2x Discussion
buy2letcars
Jul 24, 2014 15:45:42 GMT
Post by niceguy37 on Jul 24, 2014 15:45:42 GMT
Is FCA approval mentioned anywhere on the website? No? S ** M They have permissions for a number of services but not P2P. Maybe my memory is playing tricks but didn't these guys withdraw from P2P went they got a large investment from a HNWI. If I'm not mistaken you might be thinking of One Stop Funding. I was with them, and found them excellent, but they have since stopped P2P lending.
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niceguy37
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Likes: 254
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Post by niceguy37 on Jul 23, 2014 8:33:02 GMT
I think it would be helpful if in the account statement there was a link on each line to the related loan. For example, when I log in I look at my account balance. If the balance has changed I use the account statement to see what transactions have transpired. Whether this is a loan purchase, a sale or interest, I want to be able to click on the loan named in the statement to go straight to it, so that I can see my position in that loan after the sale or purchase, or to check that the interest is reasonable. That's something we can look at going forwards but cannot to retroactively. The data isn't stored as it is. If it can be done going forwards then that would be great. I don't think it's required on historical data anyway.
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niceguy37
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Posts: 504
Likes: 254
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Post by niceguy37 on Jul 22, 2014 15:00:14 GMT
I think it would be helpful if in the account statement there was a link on each line to the related loan.
For example, when I log in I look at my account balance. If the balance has changed I use the account statement to see what transactions have transpired. Whether this is a loan purchase, a sale or interest, I want to be able to click on the loan named in the statement to go straight to it, so that I can see my position in that loan after the sale or purchase, or to check that the interest is reasonable.
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