Banks Don’t Do Parties
It’s many years, since I had any hospitality courtesy of my bank. It was probably a meal from David, when we were getting each other out of various scrapes.
But last night, one of the peer-to-peer lenders I use, invited me to a party.
One important thing was said, which addresses one of the problems of the peer-to-peer lending market and that was that the major peer-to-peer lenders had asked the government to legislate and bring them under the wing of the Financial Conduct Authority. It will probably happen in the spring of next year, but as with most government legislation, who knows? How many organisations or groups of companies have actually asked to be regulated? I can’t think of one, even outside of the financial area.
There was also a feeling at the party, that the various high-profile payday and short-term lenders cause confusion in consumers’ minds and this didn’t help. Let’s face it, judging by the number of bus and television adverts for these higher cost lenders, the public might even think that peer-to-peer lending didn’t exist or was a very niche product
It would be interesting to know, how many possible borrowers, never check that they might get a better deal from a peer-to-peer lender than their current bank, simply because they don’t know of peer-to-peer lending or don’t know how to contact the lenders? For instance, it would also be interesting to know such things, as how many people with excellent credit ratings, who regularly borrow money, don’t use the Internet!
If I ran a peer-to-peer lender, I’d get someone like YouGov to do a survey! After all, the party last night was a convention of believers, so anything obtained there would be statistically skewed.
The party was also a great place to exchange ideas and investigate how your money was handled. When did your bank last explain to you personally, why they were giving you such a poor rate on your Deposit Account? No one, probably gets decent service out of their bank these days, until they pop their clogs, as only then will the bank lose the easy money they make from that customer.
Robert Peston On Wonga
Everybody and especially politicians of a certain colour, love to hate Wonga. I have little time for them, every since I saw a presentation by one of their founders at an Internet awards ceremony.
But Robert Peston in this article on the BBC web site, asks whether we look at Wonga through the wrong set of glasses. This is the first two paragraphs.
In many ways Wonga.com is an impressive, even admirable business (and please resist your temptation to send me hate mail – I am feeling delicate).
It is, for example, funded exclusively with equity capital, or £100m genuinely at risk of being lost if things go wrong.
The article also says that as it takes no deposits, it can’t suffer a run and be bankrupted, as effectively happened to Northern Rock. And will probably happen to other banks in the near future.
Remember, I used to part-own a finance company and did a lot of analysis of the dynamics of the loan business. Hence my admiration for the Zopa model, which I think is very stable. I said that here in a lot of detail.
Obviously, Wonga did a lot of analysis on their data and this has led them to their success, as they have the right model and technology. Peston says Wonga’s technology is world class. If banks such as RBS, Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley had had world-class technology, they might not have gone bust.
Most of the comments on the article, seem to say Wonga and their ilk should be banned.
But you’re going for an easy target, that plays well in the media.
The real problem with Wonga, is the appalling level of financial education in this country, which means that people succumb to the charms of the likes of Wonga.
If people knew how to manage their money better, there’d be no need for Wonga. But that doesn’t happen to people until they’ve had at least one financial crisis!
The Other Upside To Fracking
If you believe that we can successfully solve the problems of extracting gas from the ground using fracking, it should give us enough gas for our needs for many years to come according to reports like this one.
In all of the discussions about fracking, no-one seems to mention how you transform this gas into useful electricity. You put it through an enormous gas turbine engine and this powers some form of electricity generator. Normally these days they work on a principle called combined cycle and you see the term CCGT (combined cycle gas turbine) used. But which British company is involved in this technology? Rolls-Royce is the answer. Unfortunately, their turbines don’t seem to be used in our numerous gas-fired power stations. But I know they could be.
I’ve found this link to a company, I’d never heard of before called Centrax, who integrate Rolls Royce Trent 60 WLE engines into power generation sets. Their web page is here. And this is their page on using the Trent 60 WLE .
So if we have all this gas, will it lead to extra jobs in the manufacturing sector?
It could do if we get it right!
Every New Bus for London Has A Make-Up Mirror
A couple of times, I have seen the female of the species using the destination display of a New Bus for London as a make-up mirror, whilst they are standing in the wheel-chair space. So I took this picture of the display.
Every New Bus for London Has A Make-Up Mirror
That clever Mr. Heatherwick thinks of everything.
Look At This Guy!
Everybody is getting into the swing of the Dalston House.
These two pictures show someone enjoying himself.
The Anonymous Widower 