LendingCrowd Avis 37

Hello there,
I share the positive experience and views of Simon who posted on July 22nd. I started investing in Spring of 2018. Like Simon I select individual loans and would recommend that route if you are comfortable looking at financials and have the time to do so. I currently have 48 loans, having made and exited another 30 loans. So, 78 loans made in total and I haven’t had any bad debts or non-performing loans to date. I have made a return of 10% p.a. to date, plus generous incentive bonuses - these were available in the past and really help your return, though they may not be offered again.
My good experience may have been helped by good – or lucky! touch wood!! – selection. But the figures show that the Lending Crowd loan book has had a very low bad debt ratio in 2018-19 for NEW loans. If you invest you can go onto the LC site and download the complete loan book. In 2018-19 they originated 485 loans for a total of £42.1m. Only 5 of those loans have gone bad so far, for a total loss of £0.3m and two more are currently in arrears with an amount of £0.06m. You can see the aggregate figures on Lending Crowd's statistics page. You will also see that the bad debt experience was significantly poorer for loans initiated in 2016-17 and this may be what some disappointed investors experienced.
That said, like Simon, I do have some concerns by the quality of the borrower info presented to investors; sometimes it does not make sense and I try and dodge anything I don’t understand. It may be that LC credit people are looking at fuller info than investors which can be frustrating.
Final point: all this could change if we head into general economic problems; who knows for sure. But best to think of Lending Crowd as a medium-term investment that is an alternative to listed equities. I had a very disappointing experience with Funding Circle and was only just able to get my money out this year after 100 days of waiting. P2P helps diversify equities and property…but it’s not as safe and liquid as cash.
Good luck, Colin

I am slightly surprised by some of the reviews on here. The first thing any investor in P2P needs to do is some research on each potential platform and the risks involved in using them. Lending Crowd lends to businesses not consumers. As a result, interest rates tend to be a bit higher but the risk of default is also higher. Lenders can either use the auto-lend function - something I personally would not recommend - or can evaluate each loan/business on its merits and bid for each loan. LC provides a basic snap shot of each business and a credit rating: P&L, B/S, etc. I think they could certainly provide more information i.e. website and also more detail on the accounts i.e. are the fixed asset tangible or not? In terms of the Q&A section (investors can ask questions) I think there should be a compulsion on the borrower to answer all questions before the loan is filled. The platform is also open to institutional lenders who tend to bid late in the auction process and this can have a big impact on the availability of loan parts. Overall I think the process is reasonable although as noted above I think there is scope for improvements. In terms of my own experience I have been using the platform for about 3 years and my returns have been pretty decent - about 8.5% p.a. after fees and bad debts with a predicted return of 8% (more bad debts are assumed). You really do have to diversify (rule of them is not more than 1% of your capital to any one borrower). Have the other reviewers on here done this? If not they must have been incredibly unlucky. Looking further ahead - in the event of a recession it would be reasonable to expect bad debts to tick up further (than expected?) - so my actual returns through the economic cycle could easily be a bit lower. But if they come in at 6-7% that would still meet my expectations. Note the long run return from an asset like UK equities is also around 7% p.a.

Disappointed with LendingCrowd. Did well in the 1st 3 years earning reasonable returns but in the last year lost over £1400 in bad debts so my net gain is only £200 - just 1% return.
My other P2P lenders return over 5% and have a contingency plan for bad debts but all I get here are emails naming one borrower failure after another which makes me wonder if due diligence is practised, why borrowers and their guarantors are resorting to bankruptcy and if fraud is going on. Where are the assets to back these loans?
There is no clear option to take my money out either until a loan is repaid.
I used to be quite enthusiastic about P2P lending but not anymore.

Really disappointing. After a year with about £5000 invested I had over £200 in defaults and they are only recovering £5 a week! My actual rate of return is not much better than a normal bank savings account.

Avoid at all cost!!! So many investments in bad debt with no chance for recovery. I can`t even get my invested money back due to very long selling process, which will never ends...
It`s just a waste of time and money!!!
They don`t answer for investors questions, but they have a time for answers for negative opinions on Trustpilot...I use a different name on LendingCrowd and I reviewed it due to my really bad experience with absolutely no progress in bad debts recovery and no contact from lending crowd.

Actual return 2.4% from estimated 7.4% really not worth the risk

Was happy to begin with, My Wife and I both had their ISA option and were seeing returns last year of 7-8%. These have since dwindled and we around now getting about 3.5%. There seems to have been significant losses the past few months with no growth. We have now removed the majority of our investment before it dissapears completely. I knew of the risks from the start, but lately all gains are being wiped out from constant defaulters

I'm an active investor with a self-select account. LendingCrowd is simply a joy to invest on. The fees are rock-bottom low, the marketplace makes investing very simple and so far the liquidity has been better than I was expecting (Can exit a loan position with money in bank account in ~3-4 days).

LendingCrowd is very good for active investing, a minimum of 2 years of accounts can be seen for each loan alongside the credit rating as well as the ability to ask the business questions during the auction process. This makes it convenient to assess the creditworthiness of each company.

Due to the nature of the loans being to small businesses late-payment is a fairly common occurrence. I would recommend only investing in older companies with low levels of existing debt and at least a Director Guarantee preferably a Debenture too. Thankfully there are plenty of opportunities like this even at the higher interest rates.

Lots of reviews complain about high default rates however LendingCrowd does clearly state that investing carries risk. If you are careful about which businesses you lend to and re-balance your portfolio on a semi-regular basis (making sure you minimize your portfolio risk) it goes without saying that your returns will be more consistent than if you take a lackadaisical approach.

I wouldn't recommend this platform to passive investors. If you are a passive investor this is the equivalent of a junk bond fund, in a downturn you're going to lose a significant chunk of your investment. Worse still liquidity will be close to nil in such a scenario so you won't be able to exit your position. I don't think LendingCrowd make this risk explicit enough or explain it well enough to prospective investors and frankly deserve whatever regulation comes their way on this front. It haunts me a bit because I don't want to lose this platform.

I have experienced very high bad debt levels, reducing returns to under 3%.

Trying to extract funds to a safer haven has also been massively frustrating and long winded.

I have been involved in peer to peer lending for 10 years and it's a great idea, but not on this platform.

I have been a customer with Lendingcrowd since May 2018 and I have used both the self-select and growth account. The growth account has been the best way for me to get a diversified spread of loans to different businesses and different risk bands. I have tried to use the self-select account but I think the bidding process is complicated and it takes time to learn. The return of my growth account is more than 7% so I am satisfied with this as the stock market now is quite uncertain now. The customer service is great and there are cashbacks to boost your returns. I recommend adding new funds in stages as cashbacks are announced every 3 months or so to make the most of it.

Good idea "selling" the loans at auction and being able to sell your loans in their market BUT once a loan goes into default just forget it. IF they have a recovery dept they must spend their time drinking coffee or more. I have £7500 + of "losses" and £ 1.50 recovery after 18 + months of no payment. Their idea of keeping the lenders up to date with recoveries is to post a comment that they have nothing to tell and that only having had to phone them once again. They tell you that they will update every month but maybe every 3 months after a phone call they will. Lending crowds only interest seems to be growing and encouraging (bribing) new investors but will NOT look after the people who have invested to get them where they are now. Greed has taken over from good customer service. If you have money to burn them this is the company for you. BEWARE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tried to raise some money. We are a profitable business with sales throught Europe and North America. Sent full Business Plan together with annual accounts and other info. Were immediately rejected because one of our Directors had been involved with a Property Developmemt company that was struggling and was wound up around 7 years ago during the recession, when just about every other Property Company was in financial difficulties because of the banking crisis. Not even a phone call from them to ask for an explanation.

I have been with them since November 2015 - I started off as self-select but moved to auto-select because it's easier and keeps me spread over a decent number of loans. I'm now sitting at 60 loans and returns are above what I had expected (over 8% actual). It sometimes feels like progress on defaults is slow, but that really is a time-consuming process and performance is good so I can't complain.

I have used LendingCrowd as my Innovative ISA for this tax year. So far so good. My returns have been steady so I have invested more each month.

I like that when I have contacted them with queries on how it works I have received responses from senior staff. I also like the speed with which fresh money is invested into new loans. I am now diversified across 130 loans which is probably more than I would have if I had opted for self selection.

The areas for improvement I would like to see are for bad debt to be illustrated more clearly and for the iPhone app to show my ISA in full detail.

I have only used the autoselect ISA but it's performing well for me and all looks good?

This company has all the regulatory authorisations available, and the investor interface is flexible and fun to operated if you want a hands- on experience - with automated options if you don't! The bid auctions for new loan interest rate can be fun, but also frustrating when late big bids are received which can knock out whole tranches of retail submissions. Unfortunately it's downhill from there: Credit assessment and due diligence are suspect, validation of proposals is lacking and credit control of defaults is woeful. When the worst happens default reporting is lackadaisical, actions are slo-mo and recoveries to date are zero.
Smaller investors going for an evenly diversified portfolio have so far suffered a higher proportion of losses because defaulters have exclusively been among smaller loans - hence the monetary proportion of losses across the platform is less than the number of loans affected (5 / 15%).
In summary, best left to the big boys with 6/7 figure portfolios.