More Players in Peer-to-Peer Lending
This article should be read before you delve into something like Zopa, as it gives a good summary of how the peer-to-peer market works and who the players are.
I think I’ll stick with Zopa for the time being.
Zopa Brings in a Get Out Method
Zopa is in the process of introducing a get out or sell your loans on method, if you want to cash in and use your money for another purpose.
They call it Rapid Return and effectively loans are passed on to another lender.
I’m not sure if I shall use it, but it makes sense for a lot of lenders.
One restriction is that your can’t pass on a loan with a failed payment.
This does not affect me much, as nearly all of myof loans with a failed payment are now up to date, but I don’t think I will cash in any of the others, as most seem to have been going for over eighteen months at slightly higher rates than I can get now. So those are probably best left to generate interest until they are repaid in a few months.
I seem to have eleven loans, where my contribution is £300 and they were lent out at 8% over two years ago. Most are about 60% repaid, so they have done well. None has a failed payment. So I could recover about £1320, by selling the loans on. If I chose to keep these eleven loans, ‘ll get additional interest of about £100.
So it strikes me that Rapid Return may have uses for some people, it is not worth cashing in good loans, unless you have a desperate need for the money.
On the other hand, buying parts of these loans may well be worthwhile, as old loans tend to be at higher interest rates than those today.
I shall eep you up-to-date on progress here.
Trying to Stop Inevitable Decline
There are two related stories today about improving the lot of rail passengers and improving the Royal Mail.
The Royal Mail is probably past saving especially if they raise prices, as people will not be prepared to spend more to get letters delivered, when e-mail and the telephone is there. After all phone charges are dropping because of competition and the Royal Mail will only compete by dropping prices.
As to improving trains, we need to replace some old stock like the Pacers, but many are saying they’ve had enough with commuting five days a week and are using the Internet to cut some of those journeys. We are also getting to a point, where people won’t pay more to commute, if stories about low-ridership on the fast commute lines to St. Pancras are true. So perhaps we might see some strategic spending on the worst parts of the network, but the grandiose plans of some are surely dead in these austere times.
Power to the People.
David Cameron is proposing putting details of a lot of Government expenditure and plans on the Internet, so that anybody with time on their hands can scrutinise it. It is an idea that I totally approve of. In fact, I think we need a lot more information there, so that people can have statistics to back their theories; conventional or not!
Hasty Legislation Often Doesn’t Work
This article entitled London landlords cash in as MPs play by the rules, also in the Independent, shows how when you do things quickly, you often don’t get the result you wanted. Before the expenses claim, this article says that the average monthly mortgage claim was £694.63. Now the average rental claim is £1,173.81.
It sounds like in order to get the morality right, we have created a system that doesn’t give the best value in all cases.
C would have thought this par for the course, as the number of times she came home complaining how the new laws about families, children, divorce and dogs were often worse than those that had been in force before.
Zopa and the Davids
According to their site, the most common name for both borrowers and lenders is David. Is that because it is the most common name amongst the general public.
When I worked as a consultant to Lloyds Bank, they always joked that most bank managers were called John, as they were so boring!
But then the only good one I ever knew was called David. Where is he biw, when the world needs him?
Would You Trust Western Union?
I’ve never used them, but I’m led to believe they are a reputable company.
But as I get at least five e-mails every day, where the company is mentioned in some form of scam, I don’t think I would even use them to transfer money to someone who I knew to be totally genuine. And I wouldn’t accept any money from someone who wanted to use Western Union!
So why do they allow their name to be taken in vain, by all these criminals?
Zopa and America
In some ways, Zopa illustrates the United States’ problems.
Zopa is an innovative financial company and you’ve have thought it would have gone down well, given the country’s history with credit unions.
But no! The legislators made it impossible for the company to operate in the same way as in the UK. Read Zopa’s view on this. It may have been a bad way to launch in the United States, but another company called Prosper doing peer-to-peer lending also had troubles with the regulators.
You can read what you like into all that, but I can’t help feeling that the US still gives the banks too much power to squash possible threats.
Zopa Approaches 500,000 Members
Zopa has announced that they are approaching half a million members.
That to me is an astonishing figure, considering they’ve only been going for a few years.
Obviously, some are borrowers and some are lenders.
Reasons To Be Hopeful
This was the headline across the front page of The Times today. They gave it three sub-titles :-
- Growth surprises City
- Advertising soars
- Strongest ewbound since the War
They also talked about how a new shopping centre at One New Change in the City of London, nicknamed the Stealth Bomber is virtually fully let to retailers.
Let’s hope that this is not a false dawn! But visiting Cambridge as I do regularly, I have a feeling that it is not!
The Anonymous Widower 