UK Peer to Peer Lending (PtPL) – Identifying and Managing Risk by Assessing Platform Health

In my previous post, I outlined some of the factors leading to PtPL losses.  In this post I’ll look specifically at the risks associated with individual PtP platforms.  By the way, don’t believe the likes of Lord Adair Turner with his ‘Peer to Peer is Doomed’ nonsense.  Lord Turner has significant interest in a traditional business loans company hence his (biased) condemnation of Peer to Peer Lending!

I’ll ignore the big three; Zopa, Ratesetter and Funding Circle as their returns are relatively low (typically 4% - 7%) and the first two have provision funds to (hopefully) cover any losses.  The sites I favour pay 12% or more but with this comes obvious increased risk.  Typical examples are Saving Stream, Funding Secure and Money Thing. 

These platforms offer all their loans secured against material assets such as land, property, cars, boats, planes and works of art.  Incidentally, this is a much better deal than Funding Circle, where most of the loans are unsecured and the buyer must therefore factor in defaults with limited or no recovery of capital or remaining interest.

Here are two key ways to evaluate these platforms:

Number ONE:  Look at the state of the Secondary Market

These three platforms each have a secondary market where you can buy and sell loans held by other people rather than buying new loans.  But why would you want to do that, I hear you ask?  Well, you may wish to buy additional loans in order to diversify, ie spread your cash across more loans rather than waiting for new loans to appear.  Alternatively you may want to suddenly withdraw some cash rather than waiting until the end of a loan.

So what to look for?  After Christmas 2015 there was a UK PtP loan famine.  In other words there was nothing available on the secondary markets.  This is good news if you are selling loans but frustrating if you want to buy.  Now (late March) there is something of a glut.  The three platforms I mentioned all have loans to buy on the secondary market. 

What to look out for is platforms with too much on offer on the secondary market  or worse still new loans that are not fully funded.  If the platform offers the ability for sellers to off load unwanted loans at a discount, then are there a lot loans offered at a discount that are still not selling?  This may suggest that lenders are keen to offload existing loans even at a loss.  You then need to find out why they may be unhappy with the platform.  This brings me neatly to the second point.

Number TWO: Read the PtP Independent Forum 

The forum is UK-based but is also frequented by lenders in mainland Europe.   The financial expertise on this forum is amazing.  Find out what experienced lenders think of each platform and the quality of loans being offered.  Do others share your concern about a particular platform?  Use the forum to find out the default record of individual platforms and how often the capital and unpaid interest were eventually recovered.

Finally, as long as you keep well informed and don’t lend what you can’t afford to loose, I think you'll find PtPL is a much safer bet than playing the stock market roulette!

UK Peer to Peer Lending: Saving Stream – ‘Still Very liquid and Continuing to Deliver!’

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! 

Saving Stream: Steadily Increasing the Flow of Peer to Peer UK Property Loans!

Full Flood?

In my opinion, Saving Stream, incidentally my favourite PtP platform in the UK, is now more than a stream and is rapidly becoming a river in full flood of substantial, i.e. multi-million pound, UK property loans.

Although a relatively ‘new kid on the block’ in terms of Peer to Peer Lenders, Saving Stream is growing rapidly  and have recently moved into new premises in Southsea.

Saving stream loans are all asset-based, return 12% per annum (plus no fees) and are secured against property associated with the loan.  These bridging loans normally last for about 12 months.  Secured loans mean that, in the event of a default, there is a reasonable probability of getting the capital back once the associated property has been sold off. 

Secondary Market

Saving Stream also have a simple secondary market allowing loans to be sold at any time to other members on the platform.  This is great for those wishing to exit a loan early and also for those who wish to diversify, reducing their exposure from a single, larger loan to a number of smaller ones.

Note that the secondary market only operates at par.  This means there is no opportunity to sell at a premium or discount.  I like this approach and the simplicity of the SS secondary market.

Pre-Funding

The other fantastic thing about the Saving Stream platform is Pre-Funding.  Every other UK PtP platform informs you when a loan is expected to come on-line and then requires you to add sufficient funds to your account before you bid.  Often bidders fail to get anything because the ‘big players’ grab the lot in the first few seconds.  The unsuccessful bidder then has to decide whether to leave their cash on the platform (earning no interest) until the next loan or whether to withdraw the cash again. 

Pre-funding allows the bidder to define how much of each pipeline loan (ie those not yet ‘live’) that they wish to purchase.  At this point the lender doesn't pay anything.  Once the loan is ready to go live, saving stream email you to let you know what proportion of your bid has actually been allocated to you.  So, for example, if I bid for £1000 of a £1M loan and the total pre-funding bids are £2M then I only get half what I bid, i.e. £500.

Settling Up

At this point you can sell part of the new loan, if you have been allocated too much, and/or buy or sell parts of other loans on the secondary market.  Once this activity is complete the platform indicates exactly what you owe and SS ask you to settle up, ideally within 24 hours.

Generally, when a large, multimillion £ pound loan comes on stream, the secondary market opens up temporarily as lenders release older loans in order to fund the newer ones.  This is the time to diversify.  Normally the demand for a share in new or old loans outstrips supply so, on the Saving Stream platform, selling a loan is almost instantaneous where as it takes patience to successfully buy an existing loan. 

What Next?

What next for Saving Stream?  Well, I for one, hope they can continue to delight their rapidly expanding  Peer to Peer Lending audience in 2016.  This means they continue their excellent record of negotiating and managing new and existing loans so any future defaults result in no permanent losses for their lenders.

Is Funding Circle still a Viable Platform for Peer to Peer Lending?

This question is prompted by the recent change by Funding Circle from variable rate bidding to fixed rate loans for lenders.  For me, and majority of the UK PtPL Lending Community (reflected by the Independent Peer to peer Lending Forum) the answer is probably NOT.

Unsecured Loans and Defaults

The biggest problem with Funding Circle is that most of their loans are unsecured.  This means that the lender is unlikely to get much money back should the borrower default.  In my case I currently have losses with Funding Circle, due to default, of £628 with only £48 recovered so far.  This reduces my projected interest rate of 8.5% (based on Funding Circle’s loss statistics) to an actual rate (after fees and losses) of 7.6%.  This rate is falling as the defaults increase.

Lower Lender Interest Rates

Funding Circle’s new fixed rates are surprisingly low and result in a projected actual interest rate of around 7% for the higher risk bands (A, A+) again based on Funding Circle’s (optimistic) statistics.  My own experience would suggest actual interest of around 6%.  In practice, since fixed rate loans were introduced, a bigger proportion of loans currently offered are A or A+.

The other large PtP Lenders such as Ratesetter and Zopa have contingency funds to cover defaults but with Funding Circle all the risk is passed on to the lender.  For me, short term asset-secured lending at an interest rate of around 12% is much more attractive.  Should the borrower default then I know the asset will sold I should eventually get all or most of my money back.

However, Excellent Liquidity

However, one advantage of Funding Circle is excellent liquidity.  They have an efficient secondary market allowing people like me to gradually sell my existing loans at a premium rather than waiting for them to run for the full term.  In contrast, Ratesetter has unspecified, high penalty charges should you wish to pull your cash early.

Funding Circle Going for Growth

I think Funding Circle have made a reasoned business decision to focus on growth, with expansion into various European countries and greater reliance on institutional investors and a simplified approach.  In doing this they have deliberately turned their back on the early adopters and small, entrepreneurial investors that PtPL was originally all about.

Thankfully there are several smaller platforms such as Saving Stream, Funding Secure and Money Thing who are working closely with the PtPL community in order to meet their lending needs and provide the necessary deal flow to absorb the money released from the bigger platforms, such as Funding Circle, now offering lower interest rates to lenders.     

Funding Circle to Quit Variable Rate Loans

Peer to Peer Lending remains a very volatile marketplace with constant revisions to platform function and design.  For example, Saving Stream have recently added the very useful pre-funding of loans facility so you don’t pay until AFTER the loan is allocated.

Meanwhile, Funding Circle (FC) have announced that in the next few weeks they will no longer offer Variable Rate Loans, where individual lenders can bid for their own interest rate.  FC argues that this change makes the platform easier to use for both borrowers and lenders.

No more Flipping?

However, fixed rates take away much of the enterprise of buying and selling loans on the secondary market.  The practice of ‘flipping’, where you could buy a loan at a high rate of interest and then sell it at a premium, is largely eliminated with fixed rate bidding system.

This was one of the attractions of FC, particularly to financially-savvy, entrepreneurial geeks who enjoyed gaming the platform while providing a useful service by improving liquidity via a good supply of instant loans.  

So how will the new platform look? 

Well, the new interest rates being offered appear to be lower than many existing lenders would like, although FC may either add 1% or 2% ‘Cashback’ or shift their rates upwards to fund some larger loans.

The major issue I have with FC is the number of ‘downgraded’ loans and the relatively low level of recoveries.  My effective interest rate is somewhat poorer than the FC prediction.  I’m predicted to be making 8.5% but am currently down to 7.8%.  This can obviously shift up or down depending on future failure of rates or recoveries.  Currently I’ve ‘lost’ over £500 with less than £50 being recovered.

Moving On?

The key thing is that most FC loans are not secured against assets so the chance of a full recovery of capital and interest is relatively low.  Fortunately many of my FC loans can be sold at a premium on the secondary market so I am gradually reducing my exposure the FC in favour of P2P platforms offering better interest rates, secured against material assets such as property, land or artworks.

Asset-Based Platforms

Saving Stream offers 12% across the board on property and Ablrate offer 14% on shipping containers while Funding Secure offer a range of interest rates, mainly on property with rates of typically 12-13%.  The trouble is, these asset-based loans are increasingly popular and the demand for new loans is not being fully met. This is NOT helped by FC putting the brakes on their own secondary market and driving their more discerning lenders to other platforms!    

Peer to Peer Lending - Ratesetter and getting your Money Back!

This is a big issue for those of us ‘PRENDERS’ who started stashing lots of money in platforms like Ratesetter and Funding Circle but who now want to shift some of it into higher interest sites such as Saving Stream, Funding Secure or Money Thing.  The technical term for this issue is LIQUIDITY (how easy is it to cash in your investment?).

Ratesetter Sellout?

About a year ago I put around 50% of my PtPL money into the Ratesetter 5 year market at around 6.0%. I’ve now turned off further investment so my Holding Account receives a few hundred pounds a month that I can reinvest elsewhere.  In practice ‘Sellout’, the Ratesetter term for cashing all or part of your investment early, carries too heavy a penalty to make it worthwhile to cash in, except in an extreme emergency.

Secondary Markets    

However, Funding Circle has a Secondary Market so you can offer some of your loans for sale, at any time, at a premium (or discount) according how attractive the rates are.

It is really ‘Horses for Courses’.  Ratesetter is relatively safe but paying the rate for a five year loan means five years or a penalty.

With Funding Circle you bid for the rate and can then sell your loans at any time.  However your 5 year rate on Ratesetter is protected while on Funding circle the final interest rate you achieve depends on how many defaults you have and how much cash is subsequently recovered.

Liquidity in Asset-based high interest platforms

If you put money into some of the high interest platforms like Saving Stream, or Money Thing (both pay 12%), the terms are short, typically 6 – 12 months, and there is also secondary market making them relatively ‘liquid’.  Of course, these newer platforms also carry greater risk in spite of being secured against assets.  Currently it is very easy to sell loans but hard to buy.  Future events could easily change that.

‘What happens in a future financial crisis?’

Clearly you then have a much better chance of eventually getting your money back from Ratesetter than some of the other platforms.

Solution?

The sensible solution appears to be a portfolio of platforms/loans with the most money in platforms like Ratesetter/Funding Circle and a smaller amount invested in a basket of high interest platforms (if you want some excitement!)

Money Thing – Another 12% interest, Asset-based Loan Platform

Money Thing is, in many ways, similar to Saving Stream, which I wrote about in my last post.  All Money Thing loans offer 12% interest and are typically secured against personal property such as art, cars, planes or jewellery.  It’s a bit like a high Street Pawnbroker.

The Loan to Value Ratio (LTV) is typically 50%, ensuring that selling the asset should cover the loan.  The terms are usually 6 months.  This gives good liquidity as you can get your money plus interest back over a relatively short period.

The web site is easy to use and the customer support also appears to be good.  You can check what loans are coming on stream on the P2P Independent Forum.  As with other high interest platforms, new loans are in great demand but the platform currently, typically limits the size of your investment, in a 24hr period, ensuring that as many lenders as possible get a bite of the cherry.

Portfolios

The platform also lumps smaller loans together into a portfolio of typically £10k to £50k.  This makes lending easier to manage.

Fast Transfers

Money Thing deposit your incoming cash very quickly so if you do a ‘fast’ bank transfer they typically acknowledge the deposit in less than an hour so you can then invest.

Note: Saving Stream go one step further and allow you invest as long as you have made a transfer (ie they don’t wait to receive the transfer).

Interesting

PRENDING can be soulless but adding varied objects adds interest to lending.  My loans include security against a Porsche, a portfolio of electronics, a Piper plane plus 4 paintings.  Much easier to visualise rather than endless lists of bricks and mortar! 

Advice for Peer to Peer Lending beginners wanting to ‘take the plunge’

Question: 'I’m a PRENDING novice living in the UK – So where should I start with this Peer to Peer Lending thing?'

Well, Ratesetter is a great place to start because it gives a reasonable return, has a large volume of loans and avoids the complexities of having to bid for individual loans.  It is also is relatively risk free and has a good track record.  Here are the steps to get started:

1. Join Ratesetter.  It costs nothing and it only takes a few minutes to register online.
2. Once you have an account you can transfer your initial investment to the site from your bank account.  I suggest something like £100 to test the water.  
3. You now need to select a Term (length) for the loan and the interest rate you require.

Interest rates

Here are the terms and the corresponding ‘Market Rate’ interest rates yesterday (13 June 2015):

• 1 month:        2.6%
• 1 year:           3.1%
• 3 year:           4.1%
• 5 year:           5.6%

Note that these rates are currently low; my average five year rate is around 6.0% and the 5 year rate has gone as high as around 6.7% in the recent past.  Low rates suggest more people are lending, perhaps due to the Greek Crisis and the stock market turmoil?

Market Rate

Having selected the term of the loan, if you bid the market rate then your money will be invested fairly quickly, typically within 24 hours.  If you specify a higher rate then it is likely to take much longer for your money to be invested and the exact time will depend how the market moves.

That’s really all there is to it.  You can either arrange to automatically reinvest the returned payments from the lender, so increasing your investment over time or allow returned capital and/or interest to be transferred to your Ratesetter ‘holding’ account.

This is all very well, but supposing I need the money invested in the 5 year market back in a hurry?

Rapid Cash Withdrawal (liquidity)

With Ratesetter you can access your money on loan at short notice using the ‘Sellout’ function. Sellout will allow you to sell your contracts (loans) provided there is a new lender available to match your existing loans.   I’ve never used Sellout and am content to withdraw my capital and interest as it becomes available to invest at higher rates elsewhere.

Alternative to Ratesetter

An alternative, if you feel the Ratesetter market rate is too low, is to invest in the Assetz Capital Green Energy Income Fund that returns 7% and you can normally withdraw your funds very quickly.  This is mentioned in more detail in another post:  Assetz Capital Green Energy Income Fund

Higher Rates

Of course, once you've you are familiar with Peer to Peer Lending, you can earn far higher rates on sites such as Saving Stream or Money Thing.  I'll be covering these platforms in future posts.

Until then, happy lending!

More on Funding Circle

Funding Circle is my second favourite platform in terms of amount invested.  I am, in practice, currently getting around 8.3% on my investment while the projected amount based on expected FC default statistics, is 8.7%.  Note that interest rates on the site have since fallen so if I were creating a portfolio from scratch today the rate I would get would probably be lower.  Funding Circle loan terms are generally either 3 or 5 years in length although some loans are for one year or less.

Risks

Funding Circle takes up more time than the simpler sites like Ratesetter but offers more entertainment (depending on your enjoyment of online auctions) and higher returns.  While some of the loans have a guarantor, these are unsecured loans, ie not secured against a tangible asset such as property, so there is a small but real danger of losing both capital and interest.  My current personal losses are around 2.7% of the amount invested.   This will reduce if more money is recovered but also increase if there are more defaults.

Auto Bid

If you don’t like or don’t have time for real-time auctions during the working day (some employers may frown upon using you workstation for this purpose) then Autobid is for you.  This enables you to program the FC platform to select suitable loans for you and bid on your behalf.  There are obvious disadvantages to autobid, however.

• You don’t get a chance to hand pick the loans
• You don’t know how the auction will go so you have to set the bid interest rate lower in order to stand a fair chance of winning
• It will take longer to get your money invested

Secondary Market

The second alternative to live auctions is the Funding Circle Secondary Market.  This is particularly useful when you start out and want to build a portfolio of loans fairly quickly.  This allows lenders to put their loan parts for sale and other lenders to buy them.
This is a win-win for both buyers and sellers.  It introduces liquidity into the market allowing lenders to access their cash before the loan completes and for other lenders to increase their portfolio without having to bid.

Greece and China

It is times like this, with the stock markets worldwide tumbling because of Greek Exit fears and the Chinese markets in free fall, that I’m glad I invested significantly in Peer to Peer.  My only regret is that I still have so much cash in a Self Invested Personal Pension (SIPP) invested in stock market funds.  Sure, now may not be a particularly good time to sell but, if and when the stock market improves, then it might be prudent to shift more cash away from the markets and invest in Peer to Peer.  I’m so thankful that extracting cash from a SIPP is much easier than it used to be!

Good luck with Funding Circle.  In my next post I shall introduce you to some platforms that provide asset based loans.  Should the loan default then it is secured against an asset such as property or even a plane or a work of art!  

How to get started with Peer to Peer Lending

I started my Peer to Peer Lending (Prending) journey with ZOPA and Ratesetter around 18 months ago – both platforms are relatively easy to understand.  Zopa currently pays 5% on the 5 year market (ie the loan is for 5 years).

Ratesetter allows you to bid for the rate you want.  The Ratesetter 5 year market rate is typically 5.5% to 6.5% per annum.  Rates will be lower if you choose a shorter loan period.  The current Ratesetter one month rate is 2.7% per annum (but still much better than any bank!).  Please note that the higher the rate you bid for, the longer you will have to wait for your money to be invested.

Hyperlinks

Note that the links above for ZOPA and Ratesetter are both promotional links.  If you click on one of them and join the platform and then subsequently lend £1000, you (and I) will currently each receive a gift of £25.  However, these sites are easy to locate via Google if you don't fancy the £25!

How do these platforms work?

Both sites allow you to choose how much to invest.  The minimum loan size on both sites is £20 so there is virtually nothing to lose in giving them a punt.  The borrowers on these sites are generally private individuals and your money will be shared out across a number of loans in order to spread the risk.

However, both sites have a contingency fund that should cover the costs of any defaults so the rate on offer is what you should actually get.  Both sites are pretty ‘hands off’ and you can check online at any time to see how your lending is going.

The loans on these platforms are in the form of Amortised Loans .  This means the borrower makes equal payments throughout the lifetime of the loan.  In practice this means the interest owed is returned each month together with a proportion of the capital. 

Let us assume that you made a single loan of say £1000 at 5% over a period of one year.  Half way through the loan, around half of your money would have been returned to your holding account.  This means the amount of interest being earned is continually reducing.  Only the money on loan is actually earning interest.

If you want to earn the full 5% then you need to constantly reinvest the money returned.   Fortunately these sites allow you to automatically reinvest returns although you can switch this off and ‘hold’ returned capital and/or interest.

Liquidity

This relative ease of access to your money is known as liquidity.  Assets that can be easily bought or sold are known as liquid assets.

With sites like Zopa and Ratesetter, if you need some of your money back then you can switch off the auto-invest facility and transfer the resulting cash in your holding account to your bank current account.

I will return to the subject of liquidity and accessing your lent money again as we look at other more complicated platforms and how they handle different types of loan such as interest only loans.

What next? 

My advice is if you are still interested, then why not get your feet wet and try one of these sites?  It only takes a few minutes to sign up and then transfer a small amount of money onto the platform (typically via a bank card or bank transfer).

Note: that although these sites are pretty safe and are regulated by the Government, your money is not yet covered by the Government’s Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS).  This currently pays up to £85,000 should your bank fold with the result that your savings are lost. 

However the Government does lend to small business using peer to peer platforms and the Chancellor is supporting PtPL by, for example, allowing them to be included in Self Invested Personal Pensions (SIPPs).