What it Says on the Tin!
Saving Stream remains my favourite UK Peer to Peer Lending
(PTPL) platform. It reminds me of the
product Ronseal with the simple slogan ‘Does what it says on the tin’. Please note I have no financial interest in
Saving Stream other than being a satisfied customer.
Saving Stream continue to deliver high value loans while
keeping their platform simple. They
offer 12% interest across every loan with no fees whatsoever. Also, no lender money has yet been lost due
to defaults.
Saving Stream (SS) don’t indulge it a lot of chat or debate
with users but do appear to listen. Each
time there has been reasonable complaint, for example, via the P2P Independent
Forum, they have acted in very short time period to modify their platform to
fix the problem.
Pre-Funding Brilliance
As a result they are the only PtPL platform to offer
pre-funding; an arrangement where you can pre-bid for pipeline loans and then
settle up AFTER the bid is accepted. You
can also, at the same time, buy or sell on the secondary market and again
settle up the balance owed at a later date (ideally within 24 hours).
Bad Robots
More recently there was annoyance from SS users about
numerous ‘bots’ (the actual number was never agreed!) that snaffled up every
snippet of cash on the secondary market in the blink of a human eye, hence
excluding flesh and blood buyers from competing.
The use of PtP robots, software programs that monitor a Peer
to Peer Platform and operate on behalf of their human owner, are not limited to
Saving Stream alone. Funding Circle was
awash with them, particularly in the days when the platform had variable rate
loans and you could bid for your preferred rate.
Anyway, Saving Stream have now taken measures to greatly
restrict the use of bots including the use of the ‘Captcha’ (software that
differentiates humans from robots).
First Class Liquidity
The problem currently facing all platforms is that the
increasing popularity of PtPL means there simply aren't enough big loans to go
round, particularly in the quiet period after Christmas. For this reason Saving Stream hardly ever
have anything available to buy on the secondary market. However, this means that, in the current
climate, you can cash in all your loans in a period of a few minutes, ie total
liquidity. Not bad for 12% interest!
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