Until recently Saving Stream was a great site for Lenders. It had a good reputation, simple interface,
12% across the board interest on asset-backed property loans and a fully
functioning secondary market.
Hitting the Fan!
In the last few weeks, the ‘proverbial’ has hit the fan! The number of lenders has increased rapidly and
also the size of their pockets. SS have
refused to limit bid sizes (as other sites such as Funding Secure and Money
Thing do). The result is that I have
been locked out of the site when the last 4 loans have come on line and have
been unable to invest anything in spite of intense and futile keyboard
activity.
Evil Robots
After half an hour or so these
large loans (some over a million £) are gone because people with large pockets
(or idiots) are chucking typically £50k on a single loan. Also the secondary market now empties immediately anything
surfaces on it. This is rumoured to be partly
due to the use of ‘bots’. SS have failed
to prevent bot use (for example by inserting a Captcha), failed to upgrade
their servers/software and worst of all refused put any limit on bid size.
Not Cricket
This is NOT what Peer to Peer is supposed to be all
about. Ordinary people with limited
funds and limited technology are effectively being denied access to SS
loans. It’s like a millionaire going to
the local sweet shop and buying up the entire stock.
Saving Stream in Full Flood
Hopefully SS will fix things, but right now the Saving Stream
is in full flood and the infrastructure can’t cope. Unfortunately, in the next month or so a huge pile of SS cash is being released as loans mature and many will find it difficult to
reinvest in the platform. Its classic
gold rush time with too many prospectors chasing too little gold and the greedy
few grabbing every nugget.
I will be monitoring SS and hoping it improves but right now I have
no choice but to invest elsewhere.
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